ROSE-RED, upon the threshold swaying,
With eager looks and cheeks aglow,
Half blames her elders for delaying
To breathe the air of morn and snow.

Though fireside nooks be close and cozy,
Though table-talk be kind and gay,
Outdoors the rising smoke is rosy,
The sky swept clean for New Year's Day.

The pigeons wheel around the steeple,
Against the azure, pure and cold:
How can it be that grown-up people
Don't care about the morning's gold?

Run on, Rose-Red, the keen light facing
With eyes of welcome, brave and clear;
With winds and winged shadows racing
To meet and greet the young New Year!

And tell him, Sweet, that we refused to;
For we were only partly glad:
We liked the Old Year we were used to,
But sent him you- the best we had!
x63

.I~; klrra-UL~~rxto
-w-', rr

no'
A))lp

4
t6 -Ol

S OW this is the
true tale that
I was told to
Punch and
Judy, his sister,
by their nurse,
in the city of
S/ Bombay, ten
C thousand miles
from here. They were playing in the veranda,
waiting for their mother to come back from her
evening drive. The big pink crane, who gener-
ally lived by himself at the bottom of the garden
because he hated horses and carriages, was with
them too, and the nurse, who was called the
ayah, was making him dance by throwing pieces

By RUDYARD KIPLING.

of mud at him. Pink cranes dance very pret-
tily until they grow angry. Then they peck.
This pink crane lost his temper, opened his
wings, and clattered his beak, and the ayah had
to sing a song which never fails to quiet all
the cranes in Bombay. It is a very old song,
and it says:

That means: A crane sat by the river-bank,
eating fish toom-toom, and a thorn in the river-
bank pricked him, and his life went away lullaka-
tullaka-drop by drop. The ayah and Punch

THE POTTED PRINCESS.

and Judy always talked Hindustani because
they understood it better than English.
See now," said Punch, clapping his hands.
He knows, and he is ashamed. Tullaka-tul-
laka, jujaye/ Go away!"
Tullaka-tullaka!" said little Judy, who was
five; and the pink crane shut up his beak and
went down to the bottom of the garden to the
cocoa-nut palms and the aloes and the red
peppers. Punch followed, shouting "tullaka-
tullaka/" till the crane hopped over an aloe
hedge and Punch got pricked by the spikes.
Then he cried, because he was only seven, and
because it was so hot that he was wearing very
few clothes and the aloes had pricked a great
deal of him; and Judy cried too, because Punch
was crying, and she knew that that meant some-
thing worth crying for.
Ohoo! said Punch, looking at both his fat
little legs together, "I am very badly pricked
by the very bad aloe. Perhaps I shall die!"
Punch will die because he has been pricked
by the very bad aloe, and then there will be
only Judy," said Judy.
No," said Punch, very quickly, putting his
legs down. "Then you will sit up to dinner
alone. I will not die; but, ayah, I am very
badly pricked. What is good for that ?"
The ayah looked down for a minute, just to
see that there were two tiny pink scratches on
Punch's legs. Then she looked out across the
garden to the blue water of Bombay harbor,
where the ships are, and said:
"Once upon a time there was a Rajah."
"Rajah" means king in Hindustani, just as
"ranee" means queen.
Will Punch die, ayah ? said Judy. She too
had seen the pink scratches, and they seemed
very dreadful to her.
"No," said Punch. "Ayah is telling a tale.
Stop crying, Judy."
"And the Rajah had a daughter," said the
ayah.
It is a new tale," said Punch. "The last
Rajah had a son, and he was turned into a
monkey. Hssh! "
The ayah put out her soft brown arm, picked
Judy off the matting of the veranda, and tucked
her into her lap. Punch sat cross-legged close
by.

That Rajah's daughter was very beautiful,"
the ayah went on.
"How beautiful ? More beautiful than
mamma ? Then I do not believe this tale," said
Punch.
"She was a fairy princess, Punch baba, and
she was very beautiful indeed; and when she
grew up the Rajah her father said that she must
marry the best prince in all India."
Where did all these things happen ?" said
Punch.
In a big forest near Delhi. So it was told
to me," said the ayah.
Very good," said Punch. When I am big
I will go to Delhi. Tell the tale, ayah."
"Therefore the King made a talk with his
magicians-men with white beards who do
jadoo (magic), and make snakes come out of
baskets, and grow mangos from little stones,
such as you, Punch, and you, Judy baba, have
seen. But in those days they did much more
wonderful things: they turned men into tigers
and elephants. And the magicians counted the
stars under which the Princess was born."
"I-I do not understand this," said Judy,
wriggling on the ayah's lap. Punch did not
understand either, but he looked very wise.
The ayah hugged her close. How should
a baby understand ? she said softly. It is in
this way. When the stars are in one position
when a child is born, it means well. When they
are in another position, it means, perhaps, that
the child may be sick or ill-tempered, or she
may have to travel very far away."
Must I travel far away ? said Judy.
"No, no. There were only good little stars
in the sky on the night that Judy baba was
born,-little home-keeping stars that danced
up and down, they were so pleased."
"And I-I-I! What did the stars do
when I was born?" said Punch.
"There was a new star that night. I saw
it. A great star with a fiery tail all across the
sky. Punch will travel far."
"That is true. I have been to Nassik in
the railway-train. Never mind the Princess's
stars. What did the magic-men do ? "
"They consulted the stars, little impatient,
and they said that the Princess must be shut
up in such a manner that only the very best

THE POTTED PRINCESS.

of all the princes in India could take her out.
So they shut her up, when she was sixteen
years old, in a big, deep grain-jar of dried clay,
with a cover of plaited grass."
I have seen them in the Bombay market,"
said Judy. Was it one of the very big kind ? "
The ayah nodded, and Judy shivered, for her
father had once held her up to look into the
mouth of just such a grain-jar, and it was full
of empty darkness.
"How did they feed her ?" said Punch.
"She was a fairy. Perhaps she did not want
food," the ayah began.
"All people want food. This is not a true
tale. I shall go and beat the crane." Punch
got up on his knees.
"No, no. I have forgotten. There was
plenty of food--plantains, red and yellow
ones, almond curd, boiled rice and peas, fowl
stuffed with raisins and red peppers, and cakes
fried in oil with coriander seeds, and sweet-
meats of sugar and butter. Is that enough
food? So the Princess was shut up in the
grain-jar, and the Rajah made a proclamation
that whoever could take her out should marry
her and should govern ten provinces, sitting
upon an elephant with tusks of gold. That
proclamation was made through all India."
"We did not hear it, Punch and I," said
Judy. "Is this a true tale, ayah?"
It was before Punch was born. It was be-
fore even I was born, but so my mother told it
to me. And when the proclamation was made,
there came to Delhi hundreds and thousands
of princes and rajahs and great men. The
grain-jar with the cover of the plaited grass
was set in the middle of all, and the Rajah said
that he would allow to each man one year in
which to make charms and learn great things
that would open the grain-jar."
"I do not understand," said Judy again.
She had been looking down the garden for
her mother's return, and had lost the thread
of the tale.
"The jar was a magic one, and it was to be
opened by magic," said Punch. "Go on, ayah.
I understand."
The ayah laughed a little. "Yes, the Rajah's
magicians told all the princes that it was a
magic jar, and led them three times round it,

muttering under their beards, and bade them
come back in a year. So the Princes, and the
Subedars, and the Wazirs, and the Maliks rode
away east and west and north and south, and
consulted the magicians in their fathers' courts,
and holy men in caves."
Like the holy men I saw at Nassik on the
mountain ? They were all nungapunga (naked),
but they showed me their little gods, and I
burned stuff that smelt in a pot before them
all, and they said I was a Hindu, and-" Punch
stopped, out of breath.
"Yes. Those were the men. Old men
smeared with ashes and yellow paint did the
princes consult, and witches and dwarfs that
live in caves, and wise tigers and talking horses
and learned parrots. They told all these men
and all these beasts of the Princess in the grain-
jar, and the holy men and the wise beasts
taught them charms and spells that were very
strong magic indeed. Some of the princes they
advised to go out and kill giants and dragons,
and cut off their heads. And some of the
princes stayed for a year with the holy men
in forests, learning charms that would imme-
diately split open great mountains. There was
no charm and no magic that these princes and
subedars did not learn, for they knew that the
Rajah's magicians were very strong magicians,
and therefore they needed very, very strong
charms to open the grain-jar. So they did all
these things that I have told, and also cut off
the tails of the little devils that live on the sand
of the great desert in the north; and at last
there were very few dragons and giants left,
and poor people could plough without being
bewitched any more.
"Only there was one prince that did not ride
away with the others, for he had neither horse
nor saddle, nor any men to follow him. He
was a prince of low birth, for his father had
married the daughter of a potter, and he was
the son of his mother. So he sat down on the
ground, and the little boys of the city driving
the cattle to pasture threw mud at him."
"Ah!" said Punch, "mud is nice. Did they
hit him ? "
I am telling the tale of the Princess, and if
there are so many questions, how can I finish
before bedtime? He sat on the ground, and

THE POTTED PRINCESS.

presently his mother, the Ranee, came by,
gathering sticks to cook bread, and he told her
of the Princess and the grain-jar. And she
said: 'Remember that a pot is a pot, and thou
art the son of a potter.' Then she went away
with those dry sticks, and the Potter-prince
waited till the end of the year. Then the
princes returned, as many of them as were left
over from the fights that they had 1:ughr. The\
brought with them the terrible cut-off heads ol
the giants and the dragons, so that people tell
down with fright; and the tails :of aill the little
devils, bunch by bunch, tied up itih sinng; and
the feathers of magir bLrd-; and their holy men
and dwarfs and talking bea ts came i ith rhenm.
And there were bu-itck-cart full -:.f the locked
books of magic inicantratons andr spells. li'e
Rajah appointed a d*iy, and his mnlaii'in-
came, and the grain-jar \as set in the middle
of all, and the
princes began, '
according to- i
their birth and -'-~:. i
the age of their
families, to open
the grain-jar by
means of their
charm-work.
There were very
many princes, .
and the charms
were very strong, .
so that as they
performed the
ceremonies the
lightning ran
aboutthe ground
as a broken egg
runs over the
cook-house floor,
and it was thick, i
dark night, and i
the people heard -'":
the voices of .- 'c : -''-'
devils and djinns THE BOYS DRIVING T
and talking ti-
gers, and saw them running to and fro about
the grain-jar till the ground shook. But, none
the less, the grain-jar did not open. And the
next day the ground was split up as a log of

wood is split, and great rivers flowed up and
down the plain, and magic armies with banners
walked in circles--so great was the strength of
the charms. Snakes, too, crawled round the
grain-jar and hissed, but none the less the jar
did not open. When morning came the holes
in the ground had closed up, and the rivers

,l : '-
,.- .' -I J.

,

-

HE CATTLE TO PASTURE THREW MUD AT HIM.

were gone away, and there was only the plain.
And that was because it was all magic charm-
work which cannot last."
Aha!" said Punch, drawing a deep breath.
-.-'- -./ :,. :.
.-'.. .

HE; CATET ATR TRWMDA I.

1893.]

168 THE POTTED PRINCESS. [JAN.

" I am glad of that. It was only magic, Judy. grain-jar's cover and he lifted it up, and the
Tell the tale, ayah." Princess came out! Then the people said,
At the very last, when they were all wearied This is very great magic indeed'; and they

N 71

THE INCANTATION.
STHE PEOPLE HEARD THE VOICES OF DJINNS AND TALKING TIGERS, AND SAW THEM RUNNING TO AND FRO
ABOUT THE GRAIN-JAR TILL THE GROUND SHOOK."

out and the holy men began to bite their
nails with vexation, and the Rajah's magicians
laughed, the Potter-Prince came into the plain
alone, without even one little talking beast or
wise bird, and all the people made jokes at
him. But he walked to the grain-jar and
cried, 'A pot is a pot, and I am the son of a
potter!' and he put his two hands upon the

began to chase the holy men and the talking
beasts up and down, meaning to kill them. But
the Rajah's magicians said: This is no magic
at all, for we did not put any charm upon the
jar. It was a common grain-jar; and it is a
common grain-jar such as they buy in the ba-
zar; and a child might have lifted the cover one
year ago, or on any day since that day. Ye are

THE POTTED PRINCESS.

too wise, O Princes and Subedars, who rely
on holy men and the heads of dead giants and
devils' tails, but do not work with your own
hands! Ye are too cunning! There was no
magic, and now one man has taken it all away
from you because he was not afraid. Go home,
princes, or, if ye will, stay to see the wedding.
But remember that a pot is a pot.'"
There was a long silence at the end of the tale.
But the charms were very strong," said
Punch, doubtfully.
They were only words, and how could they
touch the pot. Could words turn you into a
tiger, Punch baba ?"
"No. I am Punch."
"Even so," said the ayah. If the pot had
been charmed, a charm would have opened it.
But it was a common, bazar pot. What did it

know of charms ? It opened to a hand on the
cover."
"Oh!" said Punch; and then he began to
laugh, and Judy followed his example. Now
I quite understand. I will tell it to mama."
When mama came back from her drive, the
children told her the tale twice over, while she
was dressing for dinner; but as they began in
the middle and put the beginning first, and then
began at the end and put the middle last, she
became a little confused.
"Never mind," said Punch; "I will show."
And he reached up to the table for the big eau-
de-cologne bottle that he was strictly forbidden
to touch, and pulled out the stopper and upset
half the scent down the front of his dress,
shouting, "A pot is a pot, and I am the son
of a potter!"

'LI ,t .4 ..,'

It ~ ~ a.y

r''~ v- +2. sa' in*P
t'* ., iI -I I L "
t I A*c

.fti~. I 441

.. i /t-..
tS .1
V~I ~-F~/f

BOSTON IN 1757. FROM AN OLD PRINT.

BOSTON.

BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

THE summer traveler
who approaches Boston
from the land side is apt to
notice a tall and abundant
wayside plant, having a
rather stiff and ungainly
stem, surmounted by a
flower with soft and deli-
cate petals, and of a love-
ly shade of blue. This
SUCCORY, OR CHICORY. .
is the succory (Cichorium
Intybus of the botanists), described by Emerson
as succoryy to match the sky." But it is not
commonly known in New England by this
brief name, being oftener called Boston weed,"
simply because it grows more and more abun-
dant as one comes nearer to that city. When a
genuine Bostonian (which the present writer is
not, being only a suburban), returning to his
home in late summer, sees this fair blossom on
an ungainly stem assembled profusely by the
roadside, he begins to collect his bags and
bundles, knowing that he approaches his jour-
ney's end.
The original Boston, as founded by Governor
John Winthrop in 1630, was established on a
rocky three-hilled peninsula, in whose thickets
wolves and bears were yet harbored, and which
was known variously as Shawmut and Tri-
mountain. The settlement itself was a sort of
afterthought, being taken as a substitute for

Charlestown, where a temporary abode had
been founded by Winthrop's party. There had
been much illness there, and so Mr. Blackstone,
or Blaxtone, who had for seven years been set-
tled on the peninsula, urged the transfer of the
little colony. The whole tongue of land then
comprised but 783 acres-an area a little less
than that originally allotted to the New York
Central Park. Boston now includes 23,661
acres-about thirty times the original extent
of the peninsula.
It has a population of about 500,00ooo-the
census of 1890 showing 448,477 inhabitants.
By that census it was the sixth in population
among American cities, being preceded by New
York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and St.
Louis. In 1880 it ranked fifth, St. Louis hav-
ing since outstripped it. In 1870 it was only
seventh, both St. Louis and Baltimore then pre-
ceding it. As with most American cities, this
growth has been partly due to the annexing of
suburbs; but during the last ten years, with a
growth of 85,642, there has been no such annex-
ation, showing the increase to be genuine and
intrinsic. But the transformation in other ways
has been more astonishing than the growth. Of
the original three hills, one only is now notice-
able by the stranger. I myself can remember
Boston, in my college days, as a pear-shaped
peninsula, two miles by one, hung to the main-
land by a neck a mile long and only a few

BOSTON.

yards wide, sometimes actually covered by the
meeting of the tide-waters from both sides. The
water almost touched Charles street, where
the Public Garden now is, and it rolled over
the flats where the costliest houses of the city
at present stand.
And the changes of population and occupa-
tion have been almost as great as of surface. The

THE BOSTON

blue-jacketed sailor was then a figure as famil-
iar in the streets as is now the Italian or the
Chinese; and the long wharves, lined with
great vessels, two or three deep, and fragrant
with spicy Oriental odors, are now shortened,
reduced,-and given over to tugs and coasters.
Boston is still the second commercial port in
the country; but its commerce is mainly coast-
wise or European only, and the picturesque
fascination of the Chinese and India trade has
passed away. Even on our northwest Pacific
coast the early white traders, no matter whence
coast the early white traders, no matter whence

they came, were known by the natives as "Bos-
ton men." The wealth of the city, now vastly
greater than in those days, flows into other
channels -railways, factories, and vast land
investments in the far West enterprises as
useful, perhaps more lucrative, but less pictur-
esque. It is a proof of the vigor and vitality
of Boston, and partly also of its favorable situa-

Z

STATE HOUSE.
STATE HOUSE.

tion, that it has held its own through such
transformations. Smaller cities, once powerful,
such as Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth,
have been ruined as to business by the with-
drawal of their foreign trade.
Boston has certainly stood, from an early
time, in the history of the country for a certain
quality of combined thrift and ardor which has
made it to some extent an individual city. Its
very cows, during its rural period, shared this
attribute, from the time when they laid out its
streets by their devious wanderings, to the time

BOSTON.

when "Lady Hancock," as she was called, riod when, as described in Mrs. Quincy's remi-
helped herself to milk from the cows of her fel- niscences, the gentlemen went to King's Chapel
low-citizens to meet a sudden descent of official in scarlet cloaks, down to the modem period

THE OLD STATE HOUSE.

visitors upon her husband the governor. From
the period when Boston was a busy little colo-
nial mart-the period best described in Haw-
Sthorne's Province House Legends" and My
Kinsman Major Molineux"-through the pe-

of transcontinental railways and great manufac-
turing enterprises, the city has at least aroused
a peculiar loyalty on the part of its citizens.
Behind all the thunders of Wendell Phillips's
eloquence there lay always the strong local

BOSTON.

pride. "I love inexpressibly," he said, "these
streets of Boston, over which my mother held
up my baby footsteps; and if God grants me
time enough, I will make them too pure to be
trodden by the footsteps of a slave." He lived
to see his dream fulfilled. Instead of the sur-
rendered slave, Anthony Burns, marching in a
hollow square formed by the files of the militia,
Phillips lived to see the fair-haired boy, Robert
Shaw, riding at the head of his black regiment,
to aid in securing the freedom of a race. -
During the Revolution, Boston was the cen-
ter of those early struggles on which it is now
needless to dwell. Faneuil Hall still stands-
the place where, in 1774, a letter as to grievances
was ordered to be sent to the other towns in
the State; the old State House is standing,
where the plans suggested by the Virginia
House of Burgesses were adopted; the old
South Church remains, whence the disguised
Indians of the Boston Tea-party went forth,
and where Dr. Warren, on March 5, 1775,
defied the British officers, and when one of
them held up warningly some pistol-bullets,
dropped his handkerchief over them and went
on. The old North or Christ Church also
remains, where the two lights were hung out
as the signal for Paul Revere's famous ride, on
the eve of the battle of Lexington.
So prominent was Boston during this period
that it even awakened the jealousy of the
other colonies; and Mr. Thomas Shirley of
Charleston, South Carolina, said to Josiah
Quincy, Jr., in March, 1773: "Boston aims
at nothing less than the sovereignty of this
whole continent. Take away the power
and superintendence of Britain, and the col-
onies must submit to the next power. Boston
would soon have that."
One of the attractions of Boston has long
been that in this city, as in Edinburgh, might
be found a circle of literary men, better organ-
ized and more concentrated than if lost in the
confusion of a larger metropolis. From the
point of view of New York, this circle might be
held provincial, as might Edinburgh from Lon-
don; and the resident of the larger community
might at best use about the Bostonian the saying
attributed to Dr. Johnson about the Scotchman,
that "much might be made of him if caught

young." Indeed, much of New York's best liter-
ary material came always from New England;
just as Scotland still holds its own in London
literature. No doubt each place has its advan-
tages, but there was a time when one might

OLD SOUTH CHURCH.
easily meet in one Boston book-store in a day
such men as Emerson, Parker, Longfellow,

LI;C
F
~LI~ 1-C~5-

~.
:.

BOSTON.

Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Sumner, Agassiz,
Parkman, Whipple, Hale, Aldrich, and How-
ells; with such women as Lydia Maria Child
and Julia Ward Howe. Now, if we consider
how much of American literature is represented
by these few names, it is evident that if Boston
was never metropolitan, it at least had a com-
bination of literary ability such as no larger
American city has yet rivaled.
I remember vividly an occasion when I was
required to select a high-school assistant for the
city where I then lived (Newport, Rhode Island),
and I had appointed meetings with several can-
didates at the book-store of Fields and Osgood

and sister about this! Up in Peacham we
think a great deal of authors!" Certainly a
procession of foreign princes or American mil-
lionaires would have impressed her and her
correspondents far less. It was like the feeling
that Americans are apt to have when they first
visit London or Paris and see-in N. P. Willis's
phrase-" whole shelves of their library walking
about in coats and gowns"; and, strange as
it may seem, every winter brings to Boston a
multitude of young people whose avowed sen-
sations are very much like those felt by the
inhabitants of our Atlantic cities when they
visit London or Paris.

THE OLD CORNER BOOK-STORE.

at Boston. While I was talking with the most
promising of these the daughter of a clergy-
man in northern Vermont-I saw Dr. O. W.
Holmes pass through the shop, and pointed
him out to her. She gazed eagerly after him
until he was out of sight, and then said, draw-
ing a long breath, I must write to my father

The very irregularity of the city adds to its
attraction, since most of our newer cities are
apt to look too regular and too monotonous.
Foreign dialects have greatly increased within
a few years; for although the German element
has never been large, the Italian population is
constantly increasing, and makes itself very

S~$;T~i-~~

1893.] BOSTON. 175

apparent to the ear. Statues historic associations. The great
of eminent Bostonians-Win- Public Library still leads Ameri-
throp, Franklin, Sam Adams, can institutions of its class; and
Webster, Garrison, Everett, the Art Museum had a similar
Horace Mann, and others- leadership until the recent great
are distributed about the city, expansion of the Metropolitan
and though not always beau- Museum of New York city,
tiful as art, are suggestive of which the Boston museum still
dignified memories. Institu- far surpasses in its collection of
engravings. The Massachusetts

TRINITY CHURCH.
tions of importance are on all sides, and though Institute of Technology and the New England
these are not different in kind from those now Conservatory of Music educate large numbers
numerous in all vigorous American cities, yet in of pupils from all parts of the Union; while
Boston they often claim a longer date or more Boston University and Boston College hold an

/
^/ /

THE PUBLIC GARDENS.

170 BOSTON. [JAN.
honored place among their respective constit-
uencies. Harvard University, Tufts College,
and Wellesley College are not far distant. The
Boston Athenaeum is an admirable model of a

.... .I 1, --
'.. ,,. ,o

.. .

THE NEW PUBLIC LIBRARY AND THE NEW OLD SOUTH CHURCH.

society library. The public-school system of and still retains it; though it is claimed that
Boston has in times past had great reputation, the newer systems of the Western States are

A., !~

A &

--C- -*

THE ART MUSEUM.

BOSTON.

in some degree surpassing it. The Normal Art is now manifested in such strong institutions as
School of the State is in Boston; and the city the Athletic Club and the Country Club-the
has its own Normal School for common-school latter for rural recreation. There is at Charles-
teachers. The free lectures of the Lowell In- bank, a town beside the Charles River, a public
stitute are a source of instruction to large num- open-air gymnasium which attracts a large con-
bers every season;
and there are
schools and classes
in various direc-s .
tions, maintained
from the same
foundation. The
great collections
of the Boston So-
ciety of Natural
History are open
to the public; and
the Bostonian So-
ciety has been un-
wearied in its ef-
forts to preserve
and exhibit all
memorials of local
history. The Mas-
sachusetts Histori-
cal Society in-
cludes among its
possessions the re-
markable private
library of Thomas
Dowse, which was
regarded as one of
the wonders of
Cambridge fifty I
years ago, and it -
possesses also the
invaluable manu-
script collections ,
brought together
by Francis Park-
man when prepar-
ing his great series PARK STREET GATE, BOSTON COMMON.
of histories. The New England Historic-Gen- stituency; and there is, what is especially desir-
ealogical Society has a varied store of mate- able, a class for women and children, with
rials in the way of local and genealogical private grounds and buildings. It is under
annals; and the Loyal Legion has a library most efficient supervision, and is accomplishing
and museum of war memorials. great good. Nearly a thousand a day, for the
For many years there has been in Boston a five summer months of 189i, used this women's
strong interest in physical education-an inter- gymnasium and its playground, without casu-
est which has passed through various phases, but alty or insubordination, under the charge of a
VOL. XX.- 12.

BOSTON.

trained teacher, Miss McMartin. There are also
ten playgrounds kept open at unused school-
houses during the summer vacations, these be-
ing fitted up with swings, sand-pens, and some-
times flower-beds, and properly superintended.
A great system of parks has now been planned,
and partly established, around Boston, the larg-

characteristic forms which such activities have
taken. There has been no desire to praise Bos-
ton above its sisters among American cities; for
it is a characteristic of our society that, in spite
of the outward uniformity attributed to the na-
tion, each city has nevertheless its own charac-
teristics; and each may often learn from the

SCOLLAY SQUARE.

est of these being Franklin Park, near Egles-
ton Square; while the system includes also the
Arnold Arboretum, the grounds around Chest-
nut Hill Reservoir and Jamaica Pond, with a
Marine Park at South Boston. Most of these
are easily accessible by steam-cars or electric
cars.
This paper is not designed to be a catalogue
of the public institutions and philanthropies of
Boston, but aims merely to suggest a few of the

others. This is simply one of a series of papers,
each with a specific subject and each confined
to its own theme. In view of the large number
of foreign visitors to be expected, during the
coming year, on this continent, it is desirable
that all curious persons should be informed what
kind of a place each city is, and what are its
points of interest. The inns, the theaters, the
club-houses, they will discover for themselves;
but there are further objects of interest not

BOSTON.

of'~- B

-, ~'AL~ ab2W~

TREMONT STREET MALL, BOSTON COMMON.

always so accessible. For want of a friendly
guide, they may miss what would most interest
them. It is now nearly two hundred years since
an English traveler named Edward Ward thus
described the Boston of 1699:
On the southwest side of Massachusetts Bay
is Boston, whose name is taken from a town in
Lincolnshire and is the Metropolis of all New
England. The houses in some parts joyn,
as in London. The buildings, like their women,
being neat and handsome. And their streets,

like the hearts of the male inhabitants, being
paved with pebble."
The leadership of Boston, during these two
centuries, in a thousand works of charity and
kindness has completely refuted the hasty cen-
sure of this roving Englishman; and it is to be
hoped that the Boston of the future, like the
Boston of the past, will do its fair share in the
development of that ampler American civiliza-
tion of which all present achievements suggest
only the promise and the dawn.

2 ..CZ.. --

1893.]

^,T,

THE SPINNING ON THE MALL.

BY NORA PERRY.

'T WAS more than a hundred years ago,
And Boston town was young, you know,
In that far day, and what we call
The Common" now, was then the "Mall"-
A fine old-fashioned name, that meant
A public green, where people went
To roam at will or play a game
With "mall," or mallet, much the same
As now they play with bat and ball.
'T was here, then, on the Boston Mall,
More than a hundred years ago,
There was the prettiest sight and show
That any eyes had ever seen,
Upon the lovely level green.
For in the cool and leafy shade
That elm and oak-tree branches made,
A little flock of smiling girls,
With dimpling cheeks and teeth of pearls,

And modest cap and gown and frill,
Sat spinning, spinning with a will.
An hour or more with girlish grace
The busy workers held their place,
And eager crowds came up to gaze,
With some to wonder, some to praise,
While newer comers bent to say,-
As you perhaps may say to-day
Who read this page,-" Oh, tell us why
And wherefore now these spinners ply
Their busy wheels in sight of all,
Upon the open public Mall?
A curious show, a pretty scene,
But tell us what the show doth mean?"
It means, it means, that long ago,
When Boston town was young, you know,
Its councilors and rulers sought
From day to day, with prayerful thought,

THE SPINNING ON THE MALL.

To serve the interests of the town
They held beneath the British crown.
And so one day, amidst their wise
And well-laid schemes of enterprise,
A scheme arose to bring the art
The Irish weavers knew by heart
Into the town of Boston bay.
And ere the scheme could cool, straightway
A message went across the sea
To Erin's shore, and presently
In Boston harbor came to land
A little group, a little band,
Who jovially settled down
Within the precincts of the town,
To teach the folk of Boston bay
To spin and weave their famous way.
But fancy the amazement there,
The curious question, and the stare,
When, flocking to the spinning-class,
Came many a high-placed little lass.
"'T was not for these the scheme was laid

And carried out; the plan was made
For poorer folk," the rulers cried.
The smiling gentry-folk replied
With never a word of yea or nay,
But, still persistent, held their way!
And thus it fell that high and low,
And rich and poor, flocked to and fro
Across the town to learn the art
The Irish weavers knew by heart.
And such the skill was soon displayed,
That by and by each little maid,
Or rich or poor, or high or low,
Was homespun-dressed from top to toe.
And then and there it came to pass
The spinning-school, the spinning-class,
Became the fashion of the hour,
And raged with such despotic power
That then and there the folk decreed,
And all the councilors agreed,
That on the people's public green
These spinners spinning should be seen.

HARD TO BEAR.

BY TUDOR JENKS.

"I 'M very drowsy," said the Bear;
" I think it's anything but fair
That just about the Christmas season,
Without a sign of rhyme or reason,
I get so tired I have to creep
Into a cave and fall asleep.

I take a nap, and-to my surprise-
I find, when I wake and rub my eyes,
That winter 's gone, and I 've slept away
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's day.

I believe that I 'm not given to croaking,
But you '11 admit that it's provoking!"

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.
(A Navy Boy in Japan.)

By ANNA A. ROGERS.

S -MEW

LEC BARLOW
began to travel when
he was about three
months old. His father was then ordered from
the Portsmouth Navy Yard to special duty at
the Department in Washington; and that entry
of 465 miles headed the rather long list in his
little red note-book, that he kept in his inside
reefer pocket, and showed to people who treated
him and his hobby with respect.
He found grown-ups," as he called them,
on the average very frivolous, much more so
than children. It did seem to him sometimes as
if the older they got the sillier they got. Now,
there was the admiral on the European station,-
where Alec went when he was about two years
old,- there was n't a naval cadet in the squadron
who laughed half as much as he did; nor bowed
and scraped more to the ladies; nor talked more
nonsense, as it seemed to Alec. Then he had
such an intensely disagreeable way of greeting
Alec with: "'How big was Alexander, Pa?'"
every blessed time he ran across him, when Alec
was spending the day on the "Hartford," after
he got to be almost five years old, toward the
end of the cruise. Alec got so tired of it, but
he knew what the ship's discipline required, and
"stood attention" respectfully, as "His Royal
Nibs"-Alec liked to hear him called that be-
hind his back-walked by in his Nancyfied way.

The old coxswain of the cutter surprised
Alec once by saying to a new hand:
"You think you know it all, don't you,
sonny ? Well, all the same I 'd rather have
the Old Man' on the bridge in a gale than
any officer in the navy. He 's a dandy from
Dandysville."
Alec could not understand it, and never had
had a chance to ask what he meant.
The proudest moment of his boyhood was
when he had occasion to write 8894 miles in
his note-book, on his way to Japan with his
mother, when he was eight years old. His
father was "first luff" on the Monocacy,"
then in China. The captain of the Pacific
Mail steamer gave him the figures. That was
counting from New York to Yokohama, and
reducing knots to land miles; and it brought
his grand total up to 21,319 miles. He knew
only one navy boy, "Ratty" Taft, who was
ahead of him. Ratty had been to Monte-
video and back before he was four years old;
and after that the Sandwich Islands, and dear
knows how many other places. Alec had not
had as much luck as that, but he was a good
second to Ratty.
After the first three mornings, Alec enjoyed
the eighteen days on the Pacific Ocean very
much, until they crossed the i8oth meridian.
Not being old enough to pretend he understood
why a day was deliberately dropped, he had a
hard time of it. It was another one of his
struggles with the curious frivolity of grown-up
people. He had climbed up into his bunk on
Friday night, and when he awoke next morn-
ing, his mother insisted it was Sunday and that
he must put on his best reefer with the navy
buttons, and his blue-and-green plaid tie. How
Alec laughed at his dear, funny little mother!
But she was so serious about it that, when he

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

rang the bell for her black coffee, he took occa-
sion to ask Ling, the Chinese steward, what
day it was. Ling answered: "Jess now b'long
'melican joss-day." So that settled it.
"What does it mean, Mama?" he asked,
quite in earnest as usual.
Good gracious, Alec how should I know?"
she said, laughing, as she sipped her coffee
comfortably in the lower berth.
Between breakfast and church he had asked
the second officer, the purser, the doctor, an
English globe-trotter," and a missionary going
to Siam, to explain this mystery to him. Each
one had tried to laugh it off, but when he per-
sisted, each one said: "Well, you run and get
an orange, and I '11 see if I can make you see
it." Each time he understood less and less
about it, and the missionary left him in a
hopeless fog.
Finally, after tiffin," or luncheon, he knocked
at the captain's cabin, and a voice within called
out gruffly: "Who's there?"
"Alec Barlow, sir."
Run away, run away I 'm having a nap."
Captain, excuse me, but it 's business," said
Alec, quaking, but determined to get at this
day-shedding affair at all hazards, especially as
Pacific captains are not so fierce as Atlantic
captains. He heard a short laugh, and was
told to come in. He entered, whipped off his
" watch-cap" as quickly as any one could take
off anything so limp and wobbly, and stood
respectfully in front of the captain, who lay
stretched on the transom.
"Well, Don Quixote?" demanded the cap-
tain, who called Alec all sorts of queer names.
"Now, you know yourself, captain, that if a
fellow understands a thing he can make another
fellow see it fast enough." The captain yawned,
blinked the tears out of his eyes, and said:
"What 's that ? What 's that ?"
"They all talk, and talk, and talk. I won't
name any names, of course, but there 's a big
pack of sillies on this ship, sir-"
"About the average, Alec," said the captain.
"And not one of 'em can 'splain this regular
leap-frog right straight over Saturday!"
"So that's it, Mr. Coroner ? Well, you run
and get an -"
"I 've got the orange right here. I s'posed

you 'd want it," said Alec, pulling one out of
his pocket.
They struggled with the question once more,
and Alec began to wish he had not said that
about the "sillies." The captain finally glanced
at the boy's bewildered face, and said shortly:
Subtract eight from fifty-six." There was a
pause, and the boy glared excitedly at the map
on the wall, and played five-finger exercises
against his legs.
"Forty-eight, sir," he answered, his brow
clearing as the captain replied:
"Right you are! Well, I 'm just that many
years older than you, and I advise you to put
off this i8oth meridian business for some years
to come. There are a few things that even a
lad of eight whole years-"
"And four months," suggested Alec, meekly.
"Cannot understand, and you need not call
me a 'silly,' either, do you hear ?"
"You need n't ever be afraidd of that, sir,
'cause you 're serious, and that 's what fetches
me every time," said Alec.
"Thank you, thank you, Admiral Noah;
how 's the old ark, anyhow?" said the laugh-
ing captain, as Alec slid out. He tossed the
orange overboard, and stood by the rail watch-
ing it bob, and dance, and nod good-by to
him as it floated away. It was such a bright,
brave little thing to go out alone on the ocean
that Alec felt sorry he had thrown it away.
He ran down the ship toward the stern, and
watched it until it was gone forever out of
sight. There was something about this that
made him feel lonely, and he went and leaned
against his mother, who was tramping up and
down the deck with the missionary. She was
laughing at something he had been saying, but
she took time to look down at Alec and whisper:
"Don't you feel well, dear ? Somehow,
whenever he felt lonesome people always asked
him that.
To make a long story short, they arrived in
Yokohama without incident of any kind, after
a whaleless, porpoiseless, gulless, sailless voyage,
so very different from the Atlantic crossing, as
Alec and the "globe-trotter" said many times
during the three weeks on the lonely Pacific.
Alec had never felt so foolish in all his life as
when he and his mother landed at Yokohama,

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

and got into one of those baby-carriages, drawn
by one little man with lots of muscle in his legs.
He was glad Ratty and the other fellows were
not looking on. They went straight to the Amer-
ican Consulate to get the letters. They always
did that.
Then they went to the hotel, and Mrs. Bar-
low read the pile of letters she had received,
and looked very serious, for her. Alec stood
by the front window, watching the funny little
Japanese children wading out to gather seaweed
at the other side of the Bund wall. They looked
just like pictures on fans.
Mrs. Barlow said after a while:
"Alec, the Monocacy is at Shanghai, and
papa says we must not go on to China just now.
We must take a little house here, and try and
be happy till he comes." Alec went to her.
How 's his pain ?" he asked, watching her
face, for he had his suspicions.
"It has come back," she said; adding quickly,
"but not very bad,-he speaks of it only once
or twice. That 's nice, is n't it, Alec ?" She
drew him to her and put her head on his
shoulder.
That 's fine !" he said, and then he felt that
the sooner they talked about something else,
the better. He often had a curious feeling that
he was much older than his happy little mother,
who was a mere girl in years, and had the
nature that sings, and laughs, and chatters all
day long. He had his father's serious, dark
eyes, but otherwise was very much like her,
only he had not outgrown his freckles, and his
second teeth had not quite settled down to
spend their lives with him.
They rented a wee little bungalow of four
rooms,-not counting the servants' quarters,-
all furnished, down in the Settlement not far
from the Athletic Grounds, where Alec often
watched the cricket-matches, and did not think
much of the game, compared with base-ball.
He went to school on the Bluff, sometimes tug-
ging up The Hundred Steps, which was too
much for a fat boy, especially as there was no
railing; but generally up the Long Hill, as it
brought him out nearer the school. He had
the sailor's-cap ribbon of the U. S. S. Mono-
cacy sewed on his caps, and many were his
tussles and adventures with boys of all nation-

alities in that school. Once Paymaster Dawson,
of the U. S. Naval Hospital, had to interfere
in Alec's behalf when he was threatened with
dismissal for "inveterate belligerency "- Alec
looked it up in the dictionary. After that his
affairs ran more smoothly.
Mrs. Barlow was as happy as the days were
long; she could not help it. She was delighted
with everything; the people were so kind and
hospitable; she had two such treasures for ser-
vants, and the whole thing was "such fun," and
did not cost her what it did to board in two
rooms at home. She flew at Alec once in a
while, and danced the polka all over their tiny
house; she always said that nobody ever danced
the polka as well as her boy.
Mrs. Barlow's greatest delight was buying
"curios." She got a great deal of trash, as
she was told, as soon as the ladies who always
lived in Yokohama began to feel really friendly
toward her. Her pet bargain was a large blue-
and-white vase. She had paid so much for it
that no one dared to tell her how outrageously
she had been cheated. She called it "old-blue,"
or Hirado ware; but it was n't in the least, you
know, being just that cheap imitation made by
wholesale down in Seto.
One day, toward the end of January, Alec
was in school trying to remember, long enough
to recite it, how to bound the German empire,
when he was told a gentleman wanted to see
him. The German empire was dashed flat on
its face, and he flew to the door, where he found
Mr. Dawson in his jinrikisha, and after one
glance he knew there was something.
"Get on your things, Alec; we '11 ride double
down home. I 've an atosii,* you see, and so
it won't be too much of a load. Besides, I want
to talk to you."
"What's the matter, Mr. Dawson? asked
the boy, as soon as they were off.
It 's just this, Barlow,"-Alec wondered if
Mr. Dawson had any idea how much he liked
to be called by his last name; he could almost
feel his mustache grow,-" I 've got a proposi-
tion. What do you say to my coming and
staying at your quarters a while, and our keep-
ing bachelor's hall together ? "
Excuse me, paymaster, but I don't think
that 's what you came to tell me," said Alec,

* Push-man," a coolie who pushes.

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

with a frown; grown people always took him
for such an idiot!
Mr. Dawson glanced at him, and then said:
"Alec, your mother got a telegram from
Shanghai an hour ago, from the surgeon of the
Monocacy, who says your father is-well,
he 's not well; and so she is going by the

Captain Venteux will take charge of her, and it
is best for all that you stay."
There was a short silence, as the coolies
backed hard against the heavy load as they
went down the steep hill, the atoshi running to
the front and pulling back the shafts. Finally
Alec said reproachfully: "If you had talked

V-

-r4
Klr + .i
..

4-.--

ALEC AND HIS MOTHER AT THE LANDING IN YOKOHAMA.

French Mail at three o'clock this afternoon, to
take care of him."
I can be ready in ten minutes," said Alec.
"That 's the rub, old fellow; you are not
to go."
"Well, I 'd like to know the reason why!"
cried the boy in his fighting tone.
"You need n't grit the ends off your teeth at
me, Mister Sullivan-Fisticuffs! Your poor little
mother will have her hands full without you.

sense to me at first-but I hate this babying
business." Mr. Dawson knew him well enough
to feel sure there would be no further argument,
and it was a load off his mind.
A few minutes later, as they flew along the
canal, Mr. Dawson felt a small hand laid upon
his arm, and Alec coughed a little and said:
Paymaster, I think it would be very jolly to
have you come and keep bachelor's hall with
me; excuse me for not saying so right off."

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

Mr. Dawson smiled and shook the freckled
little hand warmly.
When they reached the house, Alec found it
was full of ladies all chattering at once, as they
packed his mother's trunk and bags, trying to
cheer up Mrs. Barlow, who sat twisting her
handkerchief nervously, and catching in her
breath every few seconds, like the child that
she really was. He went to her, and she clung
to him and cried again for a moment.
Now, you brace up, Mama, and have some
pluck about you. You said only yesterday you'd
give all your curious "-he never got that word
exactly right-"to see papa for five minutes,
don't you remember? "
"Yes; but you, Alec?"
"Well, you see, I don't care much about
China, anyhow," he replied huskily.
They all seem to think it's better, dear," the
little mother said. Alec had just time to say,
" Of course it is," when the lumps in his throat
got so enormous and hard to swallow that he
ran out of the room and into the hall closet,
shut the door, buried his head in his heavy ulster
that hung on a peg, and had his cry out alone.
After a while he went into the dining-room,
with a very dignified step but an extremely
storm-beaten face. Mr. Dawson glanced up
from the floor, where he was struggling to get
Mrs. Barlow's many steamer-wraps into a small
ladylike strap, and after noticing the shrinkage
as to Alec's eyes and the expansion as to his
nose, he concluded not to say anything, but
went on whistling the only tune he knew: "Bob
up serenely."
Alec got the materials together and wrote a
note to his mother with much ink, wide-spread
elbows, and his head at a painful angle. It
ended with these words:
And you jest say to yourself, what 's the matter with
Alexander Barlow? 0, hese all right, and take good
cair of your ancul, and if the decks are slipry don't you
walk alone--tell papa to get up steam for Yokohama
soon. lie take care of the Old Blue Vace don't you wurry.
your loving son Alec.
He took the letter to Yuki, the Japanese
maid, and told her to slip it into his mother's
handbag, near the cologne-bottle and the lemon
already cut in halves.
After Mrs. Barlow sailed for China, Alec and

the paymaster got on finely together. One
Saturday afternoon, they gave a very successful
tiffin of ten covers. They carefully arranged it
all beforehand. Each one of the hosts wrote
out his response to a toast and submitted it to
the other's criticism, before learning it by heart.
Mr. Dawson declared he could make no sug-
gestions, when Alec read his speech to him.
"I think yours is too solemn, paymaster; the
ladies won't like it," was Alec's opinion, when
he heard Mr. Dawson's speech.
Barlow, when you get to be my age, you '11
know that a woman likes crying next to dia-
monds," said the paymaster, sagely.
"Seems to me everybody in the world, 'cept-
ing papa and me, are hunting round all the time
for a chance to laugh at something," said the
younger of the two philosophers.
Alec sat at the foot of the table, opposite Mr.
Dawson, and divided his conversation evenly
between the ladies on either hand, as Mr. Daw-
son told him that was the racket." Toward
the end of the luncheon, Mr. Dawson winked
at Alec, who thereupon proposed the toast,
"Home," and called on Passed Assistant Pay-
master Frederick Q. Dawson" to respond, which
he did in such a way that Mrs. Peters, who had
not seen the United States for ten years, gave a
little sob, and Mr. Peters said hurriedly:
Choke it off, Pay; this is n't a wake," and
so spoiled the end of his speech.
Then, after the proper formalities, Alec rose,
put one hand behind him as he had seen his
father do more than once at the head of the
ward-room table, holding his glass of well-
watered claret in the other hand, and with a
face much redder than the wine, said:
"This toast is drank on all men-o'-war in
our navy on Saturdays after dinner; and all
the orficers what are papas, and-spoons, and
things, think of his pa'tic'lar one while they do
it. Here 's to sweethearts and wives!"
It made a decided hit, and one and all in-
sisted on clinking glasses with him on the spot;
but Mrs. Robb, who lacked tact, exclaimed en-
thusiastically: "You little darling! and Alec
never forgave her, and it spoiled the occasion
so far as he was concerned. In talking it over
later, he agreed with the paymaster: "The
way of the toaster is hard."

THE OLD-BLUE" VASE.

At the end of a fortnight, Alec heard from
his mother. His father had been carried ashore
to the hotel, and she was nursing him there.
He was decidedly better. The letter ended
with: "Tell Mr. Dawson that he is the best
man in the whole world, next to your papa."
When Alec read the message to the paymaster,
he said, 0 pshaw! these women," and talked
about something else. Alec did not think it
very polite, but he did not like to say anything.
One afternoon, toward the end of February,
Alec sat in the big arm-chair in the parlor, idly
swinging his legs, waiting impatiently for Mr.
Dawson to come home to dinner. He was
late very often just then, because he had gone
in for the bowling-match at the Y. U. Club,
and stood a good chance for second prize,
greatly to Alec's pride and delight.
Alec started nervously when the wind pried
with an impudent clatter at the shutters. He
was glad when Sono, Mr. Dawson's Japanese
"boy," came into the next room and fussed
about the dinner-table. He felt a sinking sen-
sation that he was deadly ashamed of, when
Sono went out again, and he was left alone
with only the puffs of wind to break the silence.
Suddenly there was a roar like the quick pass-
ing of a heavy lumbering wagon, and then it
seemed to Alec as if a giant took the little
bungalow up and shook it as a dog does a rat;
then bumped it up and down; and finally swung
it slowly to and fro, before he dropped it and
walked off. Alec jumped to his feet at the first
shock, but was thrown flat on his face, and lay
there listening in terror to the loud creakings
of the swaying house, which sounded like a
ship in a driving storm. When the swinging
stopped, he felt seasick and faint as he stag-
gered to his feet and tottered to the front door.
He tried to open it, but it was jammed. As
he stood there dazed, Yuki and Sono rushed
through the back door, that had been left ajar,
seized him by the arm, crying sharply, "Ay a
Aya / Jishin / Hayaku / "* and dragged him
out of the house into the garden..
"Yuki, what's the matter? I don't under-
stand," gasped Alec.
Oki earthquake, danna san! "f she answered.
With a sudden cry, Alec tore himself from their

grasp and dashed back into the parlor. He
pushed a chair to the mantel, mounted upon it,
and reached up for the blue vase, which was
fastened by a fine wire to a tack in the wall, as
is the custom in earthquake-rocked Japan. Just
as he jerked out the tack, and was jumping
down with the vase in his arms, there came
one final terrific bump from beneath the house,
and everything turned black, and he knew no
more.
When he came to his senses, he heard Mr.
Dawson's voice near his head, saying:
"Stop your sniffling, Yuki. If you or Sono
had been worth your rice, this never would
have happened."
Yuki's voice whined softly:
Oyurushi nasare,Kanjo-kata! we have try."
The paymaster growled back:
Why did n't you sit on him, if you could not
hold him any other way ? Then Alec heard
near his feet a voice that sounded like the
young surgeon's at the Naval Hospital, saying:
"And that vase is no more old-blue' than I
am-not half as much as he is-poor little
lad." A terrible pain seized upon Alec, the
voices faded away, and he had fainted again.
The second earthquake shock had been one
of the bumping sort that does the most damage,
and the chimney had fallen in through the roof.
They had taken Alec out from under the
bricks and dust, finding fragments of the blue-
and-white vase in his bleeding hands. That
told the whole story, better even than if the
little white lips could have moved and spoken.
Mr. Dawson gently raised the small, crushed
body in his arms, and vented his helpless grief
on the frightened servants, while he waited for
the doctor. Sono disappeared from the com-
pound," and although half a month's wages was
to his credit, he was never seen again. When
Dr. Hicks came flying down from the Bluff in
a rickshaa propelled by four coolies, he laid the
unconscious Alec upon a mattress, and they car-
ried him up Camp Hill to the United States
Naval Hospital. Yuki walked a few steps in
front, carrying a large paper lantern, crying
softly and wiping her eyes on her long sleeves.
The hospital had stood some eight hundred
earthquakes in its time, and beyond several

square yards of tiling off the roof, it was not
damaged.
They put Alec in the second-story front room,
where one gets a view of the sacred mountain
of Japan, Fujiyama, the "mountain of wistaria."
Alec had a hard time of it for many long
weeks, what with his sufferings, his fever, and his

"'O'NEILL,' SAID ALEC, 'DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I WAS HURT B

fancies. In Alec's bewildered thoughts, the big
fat bottles on the table by the bed were always
bullying the little thin bottles, and it was "no
fair," and he could not move to stop it, and
nobody seemed to care.

Mr. Dawson found that the boy's feverish
eyes were glaring at the bottle-laden table, with
labels of all sizes, and corks at all angles, some
with paper stuffed in to make them air-tight.
He gave the delirious boy a sleeping-draught,
and the next morning the riotous colony living
on the table had been suppressed.
The senior surgeon's
young wife brought in
a bunch of her earliest
pansies to brighten the
sick-room, and Yuki put
Them in a low, broad
dish on the bureau,
and as soon as poor
Alec saw them, off
started his busy de-
lirium once more:
Forward and back
ladies change! sashay
across back to places "
Sd he called out in a loud
singsong way to the
pansies nodding their
heads in the breeze by
t' m the open window. It
was a hop on board
ship, and the officers
and ladies were dancing
back and forth, bowing
and courtesying all the
time. "All hands
round! Mama, mama!
you 're going the wrong
.... way," he cried in his
thick, rough voice to
the little fat pansy all
in cool lilac with a gold
locket on her breast,
who gazed with wonder
and held her chin up in
the air. Then he burst
out laughing, for there
Y THAT OLD EARTHQUAKE? was tall Ensign Tycer
stooping over and whis-
pering low to the captain's youngest daughter,
whose dark head drooped shyly on one side!
"Ha, ha! I saw you two sillies whispering
on the gun-deck; so did the master-at-arms.
Reg'lar muff, you are!"

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

On and on went the croaking voice and
laughter, and the doctors were at their wits'
ends. After that it seemed to him that he slept
for years, and when he awoke the first thing
he noticed was that the wall-paper was simply
a pattern of two blue pinks and one green rose,
over and over again, as comfortable and orderly
as possible. The brownies and grasshoppers
were gone, and everything all about the room
kept still. Then he saw the Japanese amah,
squatting on the floor by the window, sewing.
What was her name? It meant "snow" in
Japanese. Paymaster Dawson, whom he knew
long ago, once told him so. He called, as he
supposed, very loudly: "Snow! Snow!" Funny
enough, she did not hear him, and went on sew-
ing. Maybe she had grown old, as he had, and
was deaf. So he tried again: "Snow! You
Snow!" This time she caught the feeble whis-
per, and, glancing up quickly, pattered to the
bed, and looked closely at him, and then ran
out of the room in her queer, mincing way,
saying in the English she was so proud of:
" Come back, queek."
When she returned Dr. Hicks and Mr. Daw-
son were with her; and the latter stood at the
foot of the cot twirling his mustache, as Alec
remembered he used to do when he was excited
over the bowling-match. Alec noticed how
strongly he smelled of tobacco, and he liked it,
and his pinched little face broke into a flutter-
ing smile, and the paymaster went over by the
window, and tried to hum "When the sky
above is clearing"; but he ended abruptly by
saying something about "needing quinine."
The doctor looked over his shoulder at the
paymaster's broad back, and smiled.
When Alec got somewhat stronger, Mr. Daw-
son read to him a number of letters that had
come from his mother, and he thought it so
strange that she did not mention his illness, but
seemed to think he was at school; but Mr. Daw-
son explained that by such a long rigmarole that
Alec dropped off to sleep in the middle of it,
and he was ashamed to ask him to repeat it.
He dictated his answers to the same reliable
person, who took so long to write a page that
Alec concluded the paymaster was as weak in
spelling as he was himself.
It was warm, sweet-smelling, sweet-looking,

sweet-sounding spring when Alec was placed
on the long Chinese steamer-chair, and carried
out by four sick-listed sailors into the hos-
pital garden. They put the chair down by the
camellia-bush with the red-and-white-striped
blossoms, that made him think of big pepper-
mint balls. Everything he saw reminded him
of something to eat, just because they were all
so awfully stingy about food at the hospital
(the sick sailors agreed with Alec about that.)
But that morning the world was so oppres-
sively beautiful that tears of joy ran down the
boy's cheeks, and Yuki had to wipe them
away-right before all the sailors, too! It
was very trying. A tiny brown bird came and
perched on the foot of the chair, and sang five
notes, and Alec wanted to cry some more, but
he just would n't.
"The colors are too bright, and things have
too much smell to them-it hurts. Funny I
never noticed it before," he said to Doctor
Hicks, who smiled in the quiet way "that
makes a fellow think he 's heard everything
long ago," as Alec said to the paymaster.
The little invalid was left alone, only Yuki
being by, when Mrs. Peters's phaeton spun
around the corner by the foreign cemetery,-
so convenient to most of the hospitals,-and
catching sight of Alec, she sawed frantically
at her Chinese pony's hard mouth, and finally
succeeded in stopping him. Then she and Alec
chatted over the hospital fence; and probably
in all her long and very unexciting life, no one
ever found Mrs. Peters so radiantly lovely as
she appeared to Alec's fresh fancy that spring
morning.
"And, Alec, how about the food question?
Is there anything you particularly fancy ?"
asked Mrs. Peters.
"I 'm hungry all the time-they 're rather
mean about it. I s'pose the 'propriation 's got
low," said Alec, who had heard a great deal of
"navy talk" in his life.
Of course Mrs. Peters ought to have known
better, but it got all over town that the United
States Hospital fare was not what might be
expected, considering the taxes; and the next
day began that perfect shower of soups, jellies,
blanc-manges, and fruit in which every woman
in Yokohama had at least a finger, from the

1893.]

THE "OLD-BLUE" VASE.

American and English leaders of society down
to the gentle Sisters from the French hospital.
At first Alec succeeded in smuggling much
of his too abundant store to the convalescent
sailors, but frequent relapses in their health
finally exposed that court-martial offense, and
the hospital apothecary carried a brief message
to the small criminal from the senior surgeon.
Then began the waxing stout of Doctor
Hicks and the paymaster, who messed together
in the former's quarters, at the other end of the
hospital building.
Hicks and I never got on to anything like it
in both our wasted lives Come, own up; how
did you work it with the ladies, old fellow ? the
paymaster demanded of the delighted boy, who
thereupon laughed so that he could not answer.
"All right, keep your old secret! I 'm good
for twice the jelly you are, anyhow; and as for
Hicks-I think I 'm justified in stating that
that man is little short of phenomenal, when it
comes to blanc-mange. We have n't cared, so
far, how it 's done, but we 're getting proud
and haughty on this kingly diet."
Alec's shrill little laugh could be heard away
up in the sailors' ward, and one of them would
say: I guess the paymaster's with him now,"
and the others would grunt contentedly, and
listen again for the sound that carried each
rough old heart far away across the sea.
Alec's favorite sailor was the "Jack-o'-the-
Dust" of the Monocacy," who had been
very ill, and was still feeble and white as he
wandered restlessly about the verandas and
grounds. He often joined Alec by special in-
vitation, fetching a chair and smoking his pipe
"to le'ward," while Yuki knelt on the close-cut
grass beside her little master's long chair, hold-
ing over him a huge yellow Japanese umbrella;
for the sun was already getting too hot for com-
fort, and yet it was too damp under the trees.
O'Neill," said Alec one day to the Jack-o'-
the-Dust, "do you know how much I was hurt
by that old earthquake ? "
"A rib or so, the lift ankle, and cuts galore.
Purty wull smashed," he answered.
"I say, won't I have a jolly lot of scars!
More than any feller I know."
Fur the matter o' that, yer wull that, Mas-
ther Alec," replied O'Neill.

Even you have n't that many, O'Neill ?"
"Shure, no; nur a wish fur the same."
"What are you here for, anyway?" asked
Alec, after a pause.
Me stummick 's gone on liberty, and hez
overshtayed its time, like a trashy marine!"
-growled O'Neill. "Sometoimes I 've a failin'
it 'ull niver report on board the would ship ag'in."
Alec began to laugh, but there was something
new and sad in the gruff voice, and after saying
gently, "I think your pipe 's out, O'Neill; load
her up again," there was a long silence, broken
finally by the street-cry that waked Alec every
morning.
Yuki! What 's that?" Alec cried. She had
gone to sleep, with her head against the chair,
the umbrella resting upon the back. She awoke,
smiled her "Bixby's Best smoile," as O'Neill
called it and told him what the strange cry
meant-it was merely a tea-seller's call.
The paymaster had been very busy for a
week getting the bungalow shipshape, and the
morning came when he and Alec were going
to move down there after tiffin. The latter was
taking leave of the hospital that had been his
home for so many months. He leaned heavily
upon Mr. Dawson and Yuki as they half car-
ried him up the tree-covered mound back of
the main building, where one gets a glimpse
of the bay down by the Bund. It was the
favorite spot with the white-faced sailors, who
stood sometimes for hours, alone or in pairs,
looking longingly out toward the sea, which
meant health and home to them all.
O'Neill is generally here; I wonder where
he is?" asked Alec; and nobody answered him.
Two hours later all the convalescent sailors
gathered about to say good-by to the lieuten-
ant's boy, as he sat on the lower veranda, in
front of Doctor Hicks's quarters.
"I wonder where O'Neill is!" Alec said
again, and again there was no answer. Then
a marine said softly, He 's asleep."
Don't wake him, but tell him I left good-by
for him."
"Aye, aye," said a dozen voices. No one
would ever wake O'Neill again, but they did
not tell Alec just then.
Two of the sailors "made a basket" with
their horny hands, and carried Alec to the gate

THE OLD-BLUE VASE.

and placed him in a double jinrikisha, into
which Mr. Dawson also got. Yuki followed
in another, with the "honorable little master's "
clothes in a trunk at her feet. They went
slowly down Camp Hill, and then along the
canal. It was so exciting that Alec closed his
eyes until the coolies stopped in front of the
bungalow gate, and lowered the shafts care-
fully. Then he saw a plump little woman, with
anxious eyes that showed recent tears, standing
in the doorway.
Mama! Mama! screamed Alec; and such
a scene followed! Any one watching the pay-
master just then would have prescribed quinine
on the spot, without a moment's hesitation. A
deep voice from the doorway called out, "I say,
Polly, that 's my boy as well as yours! and
there stood Lieutenant Barlow, Alec's papa,
with the sunburn all gone from his face, as if
he had been on shore duty for three years.
After they carried Alec into the tiny parlor,
Mrs. Barlow shook her finger at Mr. Dawson,

and was evidently reproving him, much to Alec's
mortification. The paymaster said:
"Well, you could n't be in two places at
once, and there was no good bothering you,
and the doctors took fine care of him, and
he did n't know one person from another; and
it 's all right now. So it would have been
wrong for me to worry you by telling you he
was hurt; and please say no more about it."
Alec sat staring up at the blue vase, which
was on the mantel in the old place of honor,
as big as life, and, if anything, more exquisitely
hideous than ever. He pointed to it with his
bandaged right hand, and said rather dreamily:
Mama, was n't it good I saved your vase?"
The three grown people looked at one an-
other, and put their fingers on their lips, and
the paymaster hummed,
Now is the time for disappearing,"

and slipped out. And it was years before Alec
knew the truth about the Old-Blue Vase.

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.
(A Christmas Romance of 1492.)

BY M. CARRIE HYDE.

[Begun in the December Number.]
III. ETHELRED.
A robber bold catches Ethelred fair,
A fall from the wall, and he is where ?
ETHELRED, dressed in a blue velvet doublet
girt at the waist with a red leather belt, long
silk hose, his head covered jauntily with a blue
velvet cap from which swung a long feather-
Ethelred, whose eyes were true blue, and who
stood every inch a trim-built Saxon, flung a
cape over his shoulders, and, followed by
Harold, an attendant, went out into a high-
walled court of the castle to pitch quoits.
It was not great fun this morning; the cold
iron rings chilled his fingers and his interest
in the game, and he had just sent Harold for
crossbows that they might fire at a target as

warmer sport, when a man in an odd leather
costume, and with pointed black beard and
mustaches, suddenly appeared upon the wall
and called to him.
"Ha! Lordling Charlock, dapper little sir,
come hither a moment that you may see if this
be aught of yours"; and he held toward Ethel-
red something which sparkled like a dewdrop,
though it was but a chipping of quartz.
No," said Ethelred, stiffly, not much fancy-
ing the appearance of this familiar freebooter;
"that is naught of mine."
"But you know not, till you come closer. Oh!
You are the lad-laggard to-day, it seems; come,
my little man, a step nearer "; and the enticer
swung both boot-tops over the wall.
"Get you gone!" cried Ethelred, and from
the scabbard at his side he drew a little sword.

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.

So that 's it ? said the strange man, taunt-
ingly. "Let me see how near me you dare to
come"; and he swung his feet back and forth,
from his seat on the wall, while his eyes were
on the castle windows, and his hands placed
ready to spring backward, if by chance any one
were to appear.
Come, now," he said. "See if the point of
your wee sword can pierce my boot-leather."
The color mounted to Ethelred's cheek; he
made a lunge at the stranger's feet, only to be
grabbed and caught at the belt by the stran-
ger, jerked upon the wall, and in the snapping
of a whip-lash dropped to the ground upon the
other side, the man still tightly clutching him.
But Ethelred's capture did not end here!
Managing to gain his feet, he held his sword
one instant on guard; then right-cut, left-cut,
so fiercely that his captor was forced to let go
his hold and parry in defense. He was fairly
held at bay.
Not once did Ethelred think of crying out
for help, so unmanly did he deem it. Had
he done so he might readily have been rescued.
The stranger, fearing rescue if another instant
were lost, made a deft spring upon the doughty
little fellow, caught him by the doublet between
his shoulders, and, tearing the small sword from
his wiry grasp, sprung upon a horse waiting
near, flung Ethelred head-downward across the
saddle in front of him, and was off at a gallop
over stones, hedges, and bushes as they lay in the
way, was soon out of sight in the dense wood.
Attendant Harold, returning, could not be-
lieve his sight when he saw no Ethelred there.
Always a dullard, he gaped in open-mouthed
silence many minutes, then rubbed his eyes in
a dazed manner, staring up and down the
court as if it had swallowed Ethelred. Then,
shaking in an ague of alarm, his hair on end
with terror, he ran into the hall, crying Fire!
Murder! Fire!"
"Zounds! what has got that bawling slow-
coach?" cried Sir Charles Charlock. "He is
clean daft. Hold your peace, brawler!"
Alack! Alack! cried Harold, coming
into Sir Charles's presence, I mean not fire
nor murder, because," and he tried to collect
still further his scattered wits-"because 't is
worse than that. The young master is gone,

gone, gone!" and at every "gone," he shot
his voice a note higher; then, as if this were
all, hung his head dejectedly on his breast.
An uproar followed. "To the dungeon with
this custard-pate! shouted Sir Charles. Then,
organizing a searching-party on the spot, he
led them right and left, up hill and down dale,
during the next two days. The third day he
gave the management of the searching-party
to the bailiff, remaining indoors in despair.

That he might not see where he was going,
Ethelred's eyes were tightly bandaged. After
the first mile or two he was set erect in the
saddle, and when they had gone nearly ten
times as far, and had entered a strange region,
the blindfold was taken off, and he was at lib-
erty to look about him.
"What say you now, my little fencer; know
you where you are ? asked his captor.
Ethelred silently rubbed his aching eyes.
"Know you who I am ? "
"That I do right well," replied Ethelred,
sturdily, though he gulped at his throat as if
an apple were in it. "You are no other, so
please you, than one of the robber Hardi-
Hoods, whom father lately drove away. You
would keep me till my father ransom me with
gold, or mayhap do battle for me with play of
halberds and spears about your ears."
So, so!" said the robber; thinking, "This
child has a sense of cunning about him; his
backbone lacks no stiffening for his years; the
boldness of his speech likes me well-much
better than trickling tears, and the 'Prythee,
kind robber, take me back to my mother,' of
some. The play of his sword was in good
earnest, too! Had his father but asked us to
betake ourselves from his estate, instead of driv-
ing us therefrom like dogs, I might let the lad
go; but no, no," and he shook his head de-
cidedly, "it will not do now."
How think you," he asked of Ethelred,
"-shall it like you to remain always with the
Hardi-Hoods, and grow up to their trade ? "
Never, please fortune," responded Ethelred,
vehemently. No Charlock has ever breathed
who filched a groat's-worth from another."
"Think you so?" said Chief Hardi-Hood
(for, in truth, it was he); how comes it then

Is93-1 HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE. 193

your Charlock father has taken from us our Soon the horse, panting, his steaming breath
home amongst the rocks which had roofed us turned by the keen cold to a nest of crystals
for years ? We did no other harm to him and about his nose and mouth, and piebald with
his than now and then to stalk a deer, trap a foam upon his flanks and sides, stumbled for-

'1
.7

4; -bL;
--i-S~ .1~C~~-

41ts

"DAPPER LITTLE SIR, COME HITHER A MOMENT THAT YOU MAY SEE IF THIS BE AUGHT OF YOURS."
pheasant, and help ourselves to a side of bacon. ward, but to regain his footing and stumble
No wonder that we will to pay Sir Charles well again. Unable to go any farther without rest,
off, before that he has done with us! Get he now stopped stock-still.
forward, you snail-pacer; you must to quicker Dropping the bridle, the Hardi-Hood sprang
work," and spurring his horse to the top of off, and lifted Ethelred to the ground. Stiffened
his speed, they again shot ahead. with the jolting and fast riding, the little fellow
VOL. XX. I3.

[JAN.

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.

stretched his limbs, filliped the dust from the
breast of his doublet, and set his cap to rights.
"Now, something to eat, is it ? said the
chief of the Hardi-Hoods, and unfastening a
package tied to the saddle-bow, he took out a
piece of black bread and a bit of dried venison.

By our good King Harry! the Hardies are
coming to meet us; I did not expect it!"
A crackling in the brush was followed by the
appearance of a dozen sturdy men, dressed like
the chief Hardi-Hood, and with leather doublets
and high-topped boots. All were well mounted.

.4

u. .,
,.. *._,.,.
,,. "-, 4o ..'

i- `V
\ ,h ,

"SPURRING HIS HORSE TO THE TOP OF HIS SPEED, THEY AGAIN SHOT AHEAD."

"There, lad, sharpen your teeth on that. 'T is
thebest the Hardi-Hoods can do, for you or them-
selves, in their present case"; and handing Ethel-
red his allowance of the luncheon, he bit greed-
ily into the share he had portioned to himself.
Silence was held for several moments. Then,
suddenly, the robber-chief exclaimed:

A few words were exchanged, a little more
of the bread and venison eaten, and Ethelred,
intrusted to another Hardi-Hood, was tossed
upon the saddle as all sprang to horse, and
made off at full speed.
They must have ridden another twenty miles,
and the last ten cumbersomely and lag-footed,

194

/ -5

~t;

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.

as the way took them through brush and
thicket, among stubble, stumps, and rock, when
the cavalcade drew rein and dismounted before
a natural fortress of high rocks.
Well into the night they had traveled, and
Ethelred, too tired to move, was carried back
of the rocks into a cavern, fitted with benches,
skins, cooking-utensils, and hunting-gear. It
was the robbers' home.

IV. WEST.

Three crows fly here; three crows fly there,
Then three cats spy, near the robbers' lair.

WHEN Mistletoe jokingly referred to "friends"
whom Holly-berry knew not, she meant three
crows which had taken lodgings in the oak-
branches above her cottage, and every night
and morning flew down to her door for the
handful of grain she as regularly fed them. So
tame had they become that they sailed above
her head from tree to tree when she searched
the woods for berries and herbs, and followed
her to the roadside edge with a "Caw, caw! "
of farewell on the days when she carried her
pickings and findings to market.
"Come no farther," she had once said to
them, as if they could understand her, "for
there are lads in the village to stone you, and
call a harmless old woman like me a witch if
she is seen with three crows in her wake; so go
back and watch the cottage till I return.
"Now," Mistletoe thought, "they shall go
with me in search of the robbers, for their
bright eyes may spy out what might escape
mine, if 't is no more than a barley-corn, and
they will keep me company and in good heart;
so for a good night's rest, and the rest to-mor-
row, as Holly-berry would put it," and draw-
ing the dimity curtains, and pinching out her
candle, she was soon fast asleep.
The next morning awakened clear and cold,
the snow still three inches deep upon the
ground.
"Wha! Billy McGee, McGaw, and Jack
Daw, come hither," called Mistletoe from her
door.
No sooner had she uttered her cry than the
crows flapped heavily down from their perch
on the oak-branches, scattering the snow in

flurries like smoke as they did so, and with a
" Caw, caw, caw," began picking their way
back and forth over the snow in front of her
door.
Mistletoe took down her long cane, hung by
its crooked handle on a peg back of the door,
dropped the dimity curtains, fastened the door,
drew her cape closely about her, and stepped
out into the snow.
As she did so, she dropped a few grains of
barley upon the snow, which the crows eagerly
devoured, and thus she led them to follow her
all the way. By high noon, open country was
reached, and they were well into mid-England.
Here all came to a rest. Mistletoe took a
seat upon a turnstile overlooking the king's
highway, and, while reflecting upon her next
move, ate the lunch she had carefully stored in
the long black bag she wore on her arm, and
scattered from it some grain for the crows.
They gulped down their luncheon hurriedly,
then flew to a mile-stone, on which, while they
plumed their sleek feathers, they seemed to
chatter among themselves.
As Dame Mistletoe lingered after her lun-
cheon, the crows became impatient. At length,
rising high from the mile-stone, they settled one
by one at her feet, their heads pointed due
westward.
"Yes," she said, "time is precious; 't is well
to bring your chatter to a close; we must go
on-yet in what direction? Your bills are set
to the west. Suppose I take that for my
guide-post ? Here in the road, where the snow
has melted, I see a horse's footprint, as clean
cut as if old Hard-hoof' himself had stamped
it there, and it points toward the west. Only
one more sign is needed," and snapping a twig
from the hawthorn-bush back of the stile, she
laid it on her left palm. Saying North, south,
east, west!" she struck upon her left wrist with
her right hand, when the twig bounded from
her palm directly toward the west.
"That is well; it goes to west, and to the
west we will go," she said, as the crows cried
"Caw, caw to see her set out.
But going west was not easy, for soon it led
through tough woods, where narrow paths
hampered with sly brambles seemed to in-
crease instead of lessening the distance. Now

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.

and then Mistletoe heard the Caw, caw," of
her crows above the tree-tops, or caught a
glimpse of their black wings fanning the blue
sky as they sailed overhead. Still she was not
disheartened nor fatigued by her hard tramp,
when, just at nightfall, she reached a wood-
cutter's cottage where she determined to spend
the night.
Peace be with us if it is n't good Mother
Mistletoe, come to see Canute and me!" cried
a bright-eyed, cherry-cheeked young woman
answering Mistletoe's cane-tap upon the door-
stone. "Who would have thought it, and in
midwinter too!" and Jeannie's face was cov-
ered with a smile of welcome.
Prythee, child, 't is but to stay the night
with you, if it so pleases," responded Mistletoe,
taking the hand of her plump little hostess,
who but a year before had been at such odds
with her family for wishing to wed wood-cutter
Canute, that only Mistletoe had been able to
patch the quarrel and turn the wrangling into
a merry marriage-reel; to-morrow morning
early I shall be going on, so grumble not if
you waken and find me gone."
Not so," said Jeannie; "if it must be that
you leave us so early, Canute and I will both
be up to see you off in fitting style."
Mistletoe nodded her head, well pleased with
her greeting, talking far into the night with the
wood-cutter and his wife, yet telling them
never a word of her quest; while, from their
unfastened doors, and unsecured windows, she
learned they had no fear of robbers in this
lonely wood.
"A hot broth is steaming for you, good
Dame Mistletoe, but, alack! it is not of bar-
ley," called Jeannie the next morning a half
hour before the clock had struck four, "for
what think you has befallen us in the night ? "
I know not," replied Mistletoe, emerging
from the tiny room assigned her, and looking
in her peaked-hat and neat neckerchief as trim
and trig as if she had but walked a stone's-
throw the previous day. "I have little skill
in the guesser's art. Has some bad luck be-
fallen you ? "
"It is that our last and only bag of barley
was stolen in the night! Never has such like
happened us before!" and Jeannie rubbed

the tears from her eyes. "Canute is already in
pursuit of the thieves! "
"Which way has he taken ?" asked Mistletoe,
supping her broth hurriedly.
To the southeastward, for it is likely," he
said, "that they are some bold trampers-
though belike it is but one- strayed toward us
on the way to Lunnun-town. Some little bar-
ley they spilled right next the door-stone, and
three crows are already there to eat it. See
you them? Think you they could have aught
to do with the taking of it? 'T is hearsay that
they bode no good."
"Nor harm, either," said Mistletoe, cheerily,
"unless it is the taking from you of a crop of
barley, through their bills, that is not worth a
penny-toss, and is the robber's loss at that!-
But now I must be off. On my way back I will
stay me a twinkling to hear if Canute has
caught the robbers"; and stepping out, as the
crows rose from the ground and flew above
her, she trudged sturdily away again upon her
search.
At the end of the first few miles, the path
she followed diverged in three divisions, all
seemingly little traveled, and equally unkempt
and forbidding.
Mistletoe stopped and reflected which to
take. A broken thorn-bush and some tram-
pled earth, as if a restive horse had been tied
and, later, driven along the northwest path, was
deciding her to choose that way, when she ob-
served that the crows, settling upon the mid-
west path in front of her, were picking here
and there at scattered barley-grains.
"Ah, ha! Sir Robber!" she exclaimed to
herself, "I see you did not come my way,
but struck your path by some more secluded
track; 't is well, however, for a bag that leaks
once will leak twice and thrice. All seems in
train for the crows and me," and laughing
right gleefully, she followed her sable birds as
they swallowed the barley-trail.
The crows still picking the stolen barley-
corns or flying above the steep rocks--they
came to a rugged cliff, extending up one side of
a deep ravine, fended by a wild growth of brush
and trees, that looked almost impenetrable.
Stunted hemlocks, thick-set pines, and brawling
scrub-oaks scratched and scraped upon each

196

HOLLY-BERRY AND MISTLETOE.

other, as if wrangling in their ardor to protect
a spot so grimly adapted to a robbers' den.
Mistletoe, scanning closely this stronghold,
from a rise upon which she cautiously stood
overlooking the tree-jungle, anxiously watched
for some appearance of life within the grim
ravine.
By my faith 't is strange," she said to her-
self, after waiting a good half-hour, that no
one goes in, out, or about this hawk-nest of
an hollow; there seems not even a horse
to whinny, nor a dog to whine, yet I am
far in my dotage if this is not the Hardis'
home!"
Suddenly, with a "Caw, caw, caw," the
crows rose high in the air, from the tall tree
on which they had been perching, then
dropped as quickly, and ranged themselves
on a lower limb of the same tree, where sat,
on an opposite limb, a black cat that had
been bird-nesting.
The cat put up its back hair, and comb-
ing its way down the tree-trunk, in a snarl
of terror, scurried toward the door of the
robber cave.
This door was of hewn oak, strongly set with
iron bolts and hinges, and, that it might not
attract the attention of even a winter spy, was
stained and weather-marked to match the face
of the rock into which it opened, while bushes
and a few clinging vines, though bare of fo-
liage at this season, still further masked its use
to all but the robber family.
"So! So! cried Mistletoe, her eyes upon
the cat as it scratched and meawed at the
cave door for admission. "First 't is the barley,
and then 't is the cat that tells us, as plain as
day, where hide the Hardi-Hoods. If I mis-
take not, this cat is the same as they had
with them on Charlock-land, that was the fear
of every chipmunk, chick, and sparrow upon
the place."

"Hark ye!" exclaimed the chief of the
Hardi-Hoods, who was at home drowsing in
the cave, "what has got the cat that it is
currying down the door at such a rate, and
yowls louder than a hinge rusted for fifty years.
Something is much amiss! and opening the
door, he went to find what had alarmed the cat
as it scuttled by him, and hid in the darkest
corner of the cave.
"This means something very wrong," said
the robber, and he gazed warily about.
Above him was a beautiful sky, broad and
blue, unflecked by a single storm-cloud;
around him was the thick tree-jungle, bent
only on its picket duty; under him was the
ground laid out in deceiving trap-holes, but he
had put them there. Need he fear danger?
At length his eye lighted on the three crows,
seated side by side on a high tree overshadow-
ing the cliff.
"Sho!" he cried, "it is a brave cat you are!"
cried he. "Here, bring my crossbow, that I
may lay out a scarecrow, one, two, three of
them, for our dainty kit to dine on."
Ethelred, unable to resist the temptation to
look outside, followed Chief Hardi-Hood on
tiptoe; and now, as that robber turned to re-
ceive his crossbow, dived under his extended
arm, and bounded out into the fresh air.
Here, you young Charlock!" cried the rob-
ber chief, catching him by his doublet, "get
you back to yonder cave, else will you be sent
to join the crows!"
"Caw, caw, caw!" said the crows, rising in
heavy flight from the tree and sailing out of
sight.
Plague upon it! exclaimed Chief Hardi-
Hood, "I lost a good shot because of that
nimble lad. I will be tilly-vallyed if he has
aught but a planked shadow for his supper,
ill luck to it! -though he seldom eats much
more than that, as 't is."

(To be continued.)

1893.]

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

BY KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Author of The Birds' Christmas Carol," "A Summer in a Canon," etc.

[Begzm in the November number.
CHAPTER VI.
POLLY TRIES A LITTLE MISSIONARY WORK.
ONE change had come over their life during
these months which is not explained in Polly's
correspondence, and it concerns our little circle
of people very intimately.
The Olivers had been in San Francisco over
a month, but though Edgar Noble had been
advised of the fact, he had not come over from
Berkeley to see his old friends. Polly had at
length written him a note which still remained
unanswered when she started one afternoon on
a trip across the bay for her first Spanish conver-
sation with Professor Salazar. She had once
visited the university buildings, but Professor
Salazar lived not only at some distance from the
college, but at some distance from everything
else. Still, she had elaborate written directions
in her pocket, and hoped to find the place
without difficulty.
She had no sooner alighted at the station
than she felt an uneasy consciousness that it
was not the right one, and that she should have
gone farther before leaving the railway. How-
ever, there was no certainty about it in her
mind, so after asking at two houses half a mile
apart, and finding that the inmates had never
heard of Professor Salazar's existence, she
walked down a shady road, hoping to find
another household where his name and fame
had penetrated.
The appointed hour for the lessons was half-
past three on Fridays, but it was after four, and
Polly seemed to be walking farther and farther
away from civilization.
"I shall have to give it up," she thought;
" I will go back to the station where I got off
and wait until the next train for San Francisco
comes along, which will be nobody knows

when. How provoking it is, and how stupid I
am! Professor Salazar will stay at home for
me, and very likely Mrs. Salazar has made little
cakes and coffee, and here I am floundering in
the woods! I '11 sit down under these trees,
and do a bit of Spanish while I 'm resting for
the walk back."
Just at this moment a chorus of voices
sounded in the distance, then some loud talk-
ing, then more singing.
It is some of the students," thought Polly,
as she hastily retired behind a tree until they
should pass.
But unfortunately they did not pass. Just
as they came opposite her hiding-place, they
threw themselves down in a sunny spot on the
opposite side of the road and lighted their
cigarettes.
"No hurry!" said one, "let 's take it easy;
the train does n't leave till 4.50. Where are
you going, Ned ?"
"Home, I guess, where I was going when
you met me. I told you I could only walk to
the turn."
"Home ? No, you don't!" expostulated
half a dozen laughing voices; "we 've un-
earthed the would-be hermit, and we mean to
keep him."
"Can't go with you to-night, boys, worse
luck!" repeated the second speaker. "Got
to cram for that examination or be plucked
again; and one more plucking will settle this
child's university career!"
"Oh! let the examinations go to the dick-
ens! What 's the use?-all the same a hun-
dred years hence. The idea of cramming
Friday night! Come on!"
Can't do it, old chaps; but next time goes.
See you Monday. Ta-ta!"
Polly peeped cautiously from behind her tree.
"I believe that voice is Edgar Noble's, or

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

else I 'm very much mistaken. I thought of it
when I first heard them singing. Yes, it is!
Now, those hateful boys are going to get him
into trouble! "
Just at this moment four of the boys jumped
from the ground and, singing vociferously

"He won't go home any
more,
He won't go home any
more,
He won't go home any
more,
Way down on the Bingo
farm "

they rushed after young
Noble, pinioned him, and
brought him back.
See heri, Noble," ex-
postulated one of them
who seemed to be a
commanding genius a-
mong the rest,-" see
here, don't go and be
a spoil-sport! What's
the matter with you?
We're going to chip in
for a good dinner, go to
the minstrels, and then,
-oh! then we'll go and
have a game of billiards.
You play so well that
you won't have to pay ,
anything. And if you
want money, Will 's
flush, he '11 lend you a
' tenner.' You know there
won't be any fun in
it unless you 're there!
POLL'
We '1 get the last boat
back to-night, or the first in the morning."
A letter from his mother lay in Edgar'
pocket-a letter which had brought something
like tears to his eyes for a moment, and ove
which he had vowed better things. But h,
yielded, nevertheless,-that it was with reluc
tance did n't do any particular good to any
body, though the recording angels may havy
made a note of it,-and strolled along witl
the other students, who were evidently in grea
glee over their triumph.

Meanwhile Polly had been plotting. Her
brain was not a great one, but it worked very
swiftly. Scarcely stopping to think, lest her
courage should not be equal to the strain of
meeting six or eight young men face to face,
she stepped softly out of her retreat, walked

P, 41.,

Of.*j
VIr YJ

I PEEPED CAUTIOUSLY FROM BEHIND HER TREE."
gently down the road, and when she had come
s within ten feet of the group, halted, and, clear-
g ing her throat desperately, said, "I beg your
r pardon-"
2 The whole party turned with one accord, a
- good deal of amazement in their eyes, as there
- had not been a sign of life in the road a mo-
e ment before, and now here was a sort of wood-
i land sprite, a "nut-brown made" with a re-
t markably sweet voice.
I beg your pardon, but can you tell me

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

the way to Professor Salazar's house?-Why "
(this with a charming smile and expression as
of one having found an angel of deliverance) -
" why, it is--is n't it?- Mr. Edgar Noble of
Santa Barbara!"
Edgar, murmuring Polly Oliver, by Jove! "
lifted his hat at once, and saying, Excuse me,
boys," turned back and gallantly walked at
Polly's side.
Why, Miss Polly, this is an unexpected way
of meeting you !"
(" Very unexpected," thought Polly.) Is it
not, indeed? I wrote you a note the other
day, telling you that we hoped to see you soon
in San Francisco."
Yes," said Edgar; I did n't answer it be-
cause I intended to present myself in person
to-morrow or Sunday. What are you doing in
this vicinity ?" he continued, "or, to put it
poetically,
Pray why are you loitering here, pretty maid?"
No wonder you ask. I am floundering'
at present. I came over to a Spanish lesson at
Professor Salazar's, and I have quite lost my
way. If you will be kind enough to put me on
the right road I shall be very much obliged,
though I don't like to keep you from your
friends," said Polly, with a quizzical smile.
"You see the Professor won't know why I
missed my appointment, and I can't bear to let
him think me capable of neglect; he has been
so very kind."
But you can't walk there. You must have
gotten off at the wrong station; it is quite a
mile, even across the fields."
"And what is a mile, sir? Have you for-
gotten that I am a country girl?" and she
smiled up at him brightly, with a look that
challenged remembrance.
I remember that you could walk with any
of us," said Edgar, thinking how the freckles
had disappeared from Polly's roseleaf skin, and
how particularly fetching she looked in her
brown felt sailor-hat. Well, if you really wish
to go there, I '11 see you safely to the house and
take you over to the city afterward, as it will
be almost dark. I was going over, at any
rate, and one train earlier or later won't make
any difference."

("Perhaps it won't and perhaps it will,"
thought Polly.) If you are sure it won't be
too much trouble then -"
Not a bit. Excuse me a moment while I
run back and explain the matter to the boys."
The boys did not require any elaborate ex-
planation.
Oh! the power of a winsome face! No bet-
ter than many other good things, but surely
one of them, and when it is united to a fair
amount of goodness, something to be devoutly
thankful for. It is to be feared that if a lump-
ish, dumpish sort of girl (good as gold, you
know, but not suitable for occasions when a
fellow's will has to be caught on the fly," and
held until it settles to its work), if that lump-
ish, dumpish girl had asked the way to Pro-
fessor Salazar's house, Edgar Noble would
have led her courteously to the turn of the
road, lifted his hat, and wished her a pleasant
journey.
But Polly was wearing her Sunday dress
of golden brown cloth and a jaunty jacket
trimmed with tawny sable (the best bits of an
old pelisse of Mrs. Oliver's). The sun shone on
the loose coil of her waving hair that was only
caught in place by a tortoise-shell arrow; the
wind blew some of the dazzling tendrils across
her forehead; the eyes that glanced up from
under her smart little sailor-hat were as blue as
sapphires; and Edgar, as he looked, suddenly
feared that there might be vicious bulls in the
meadows, and did n't dare as a gentleman to
trust Polly alone! He had n't remembered
anything special about her, but after an interval
of two years she seemed all at once as desirable
as dinner, as tempting as the minstrels, almost
as the fascinating billiards (when one had just
money enough in one's pocket for one's last
board-bill and none for the next)!
The boys, as I say, had imagined Edgar's
probable process of reasoning. Polly was stand-
ing in the highroad where "a wayfaring man,
though a fool," could look at her; and when
Edgar explained that it was his duty to see her
safely to her destination, they all bowed to the
inevitable. The one called Tony even said that
he would be glad to "swap" with him, and the
whole party offered to support him in his escort
duty if he said the word. He agreed to meet

200

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

the boys later, as Polly's quick ear assured her,
and having behaved both as a man of honor
and knight of chivalry, he started unsuspect-
ingly across the fields with his would-be
guardian.
She darted a searching look at him as they
walked along.
Oh, how old and 'gentlemanly' you look,
Edgar! I feel quite afraid of you!"
"I 'm glad you do. There used to be a pain-
ful lack of reverence in your manners, Miss
Polly."
"There used to be a painful lack of polite-
ness in yours, Mr. Edgar. Oh, dear, I meant
to begin so nicely with you and astonish you
with my new grown-up manners! Now, Edgar,
if you will try your best not to be provoking,
I won't say a single disagreeable thing."
Polly, shall I tell you the truth?"
"You might try; it would be good practice,
even if you did n't accomplish anything."
How does that remark conform with your
late promises ? However, I '11 be forgiving
and see if I receive any reward; I 've tried
every other line of action. What I was going
to say when you fired that last shot was this.
I agree with Jack Howard, who used to say
that he would rather quarrel with you than be
friends with any other girl."
"It is nice," said Polly complacently. "I
feel a sort of pleasant glow myself, whenever
I 've talked to you a few minutes; but the
trouble is that you used to fan that pleasant
glow into a raging heat, and then we both got
angry."
Now if the raging heat' has faded into the
'pleasant glow,' I don't mind telling you that
you are very much improved," said Edgar, en-
couragingly. "Your temper seems much the
same, but no one who knew you at fourteen
could have foreseen that you would turn out so
exceedingly well."
"Do you mean that I am better-looking? "
asked Polly, with the excited frankness of six-
teen years.
Exactly."
Oh! thank you, thank you, Edgar. I 'm
ever so much obliged. I 've thought so a little
myself, lately; but it 's worth everything to
have your grown-up, college opinion. Of

course red hair has come into fashion,-that 's
one point in my favor, though I never dare to
stand in a strong light. Then my freckles have
gone, which is a great help. Nothing can be
done with my aspiring nose. I 've tried in
vain to push it down, and now I 'm simply liv-
ing it down."
Now, do you know, I rather like your nose,
and it 's a very valuable index to your disposi-
tion. I don't know whether, if it were re-
moved from your face, it would mean so much;
but taken in connection with its surroundings,
it 's a very expressive feature; it warns the
stranger to be careful."
And so, with a great deal of nonsense and a
good sprinkling of quiet, friendly chat, they
made their way to Professor Salazar's house,
proffered Polly's apologies, and took the train
for San Francisco.

CHAPTER VII.
WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS."
THE trip from Berkeley to San Francisco
was a brilliant success from Edgar's stand-
point, but Polly would have told you that she
never worked harder in her life.
I '11 just say How do you do ?' to your
mother, and then be off," said Edgar as they
neared the house.
Oh, but you surely will stay to dinner with
us! said Polly, with the most innocent look of
disappointment on her face,- a look of such
obvious grief that a person of any feeling could
hardly help wishing to remove it, if possible.
"You see, Edgar" (putting the latch-key in
the door), "mama is so languid and ill that she
cannot indulge in many pleasures, and I had
quite counted on you to amuse her a little
for me this evening. But come up and you
shall do as you like after dinner.
"I 've brought you a charming surprise,
Mamacita! called Polly from the stairs; "an
old friend whom I picked up in the woods like
a wild flower (" that 's a good name for him,"
she thought) and brought home to you."
Mrs. Oliver was delighted to see Edgar, but
after the first greetings were over, Polly fancied
that she had not closed the front door, and
Edgar offered to go down and make sure.

1893.1

201

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

In a second Polly crossed the room to her
mother's side, and whispered impressively, Ed-
gar must be kept here until after midnight; I
have good reasons that I will explain when we
are alone. Keep him somehow,-anyhow! "
Mrs. Oliver had not lived sixteen years with
Polly without learning to leap to conclusions.
" Run down and ask Mrs. Howe if she will let
us have her hall-bedroom to-night," she re-
plied; "nod your head for yes when you come
back, and I '11 act accordingly; I have a re-
quest to make of Edgar, and am glad to have
so early an opportunity of talking with him."
"We did close the door, after all," said Ed-
gar, coming in again. What a pretty little flat
you have here! I have n't seen anything so
cozy and homelike for ages."
"Then make yourself at home in it," said
Mrs. Oliver, while Polly joined in with, Is n't
that a pretty fire in the grate ? I '11 give you
one rose-colored lamp with your firelight. Here,
Mamacita, is the rocker for you on one side;
here, Edgar, is our one man's chair' for you
on the other. Stretch out your feet as lazily
as you like on my new goatskin rug. You are
our only home-friend in San Francisco; and
oh! how mama will spoil you whenever she has
the chance! Now talk to each other cozily
while the 'angel of the house' cooks dinner."
It may be mentioned here that as Mrs.
Chadwick's monthly remittances varied from
sixty to seventy-five dollars, but never reached
the promised eighty-five, Polly had dismissed
little Yung Lee for a month, two weeks of
which would be the Christmas vacation, and
hoped in this way to make up deficiencies. The
sugar-bowl and ginger-jar were stuffed copiously
with notes of hand signed Cigar-box," but
held a painfully small amount of cash.
Can't I go out and help Polly? asked Ed-
gar, a little later. I should never have agreed
to stay and dine if I had known that she was the
cook."
Go out, by all means; but you need n't be
anxious. Ours is a sort of doll-housekeeping.
We buy everything cooked, as far as possible,
and Polly makes play of the rest. It all seems
so simple and interesting to plan for two when
we have been used to twelve and fourteen."
Can I come in ?" called Edgar from the

tiny dining-room to Polly, who had laid aside
her Sunday finery and was clad in brown Scotch
gingham mostly covered with apron.
"Yes, if you like; but you won't be spoiled
here, so don't hope it. Mama and I are two
very different persons. Tie that apron round
your waist; I 've just begun the salad-dressing;
is your intelligence equal to stirring it round
and round and pouring in oil drop by drop,
while I take up the dinner? "
Fully. Just try me. I '11 make it stand on
its head in three minutes! "
Meanwhile Polly set on the table a platter
of lamb-chops; some Saratoga potatoes which
had come out of a pasteboard box; a dish of
canned French peas, and a mound of currant-
jelly.
"That 's good," she remarked critically,
coming back to her apprentice, who was toil-
ing with most unnecessary vigor, so that the
veins stood out boldly on his forehead. "You're
really not stupid, for a boy; and you have n't
'made a mess,' which is more than I hoped.
Now please pour the dressing over those sliced
tomatoes; set them on the side-table in the
banquet-hall; put the plate in the sink; move
three chairs up to the dining-table (oh! it 's so
charming to have three!); light the silver can-
dlesticks in the middle of the table; go in and
get mama; see if the fire needs coal; and I '11
be ready by that time."
"I can never remember, but I fly Oh! what
an excellent slave-driver was spoiled in you!"
said Edgar.
The little dinner was delicious, and such a
change from the long boarding-house table at
which Edgar had eaten for over a year. The
candles gave a soft light; there was a bowl of
yellow flowers underneath them. Mrs. Oliver
looked like an elderly Dresden-china shepherd-
ess in her pale blue wrapper, and Polly did n't
suffer from the brown gingham, with its wide

collar and cuffs of buff embroidery, and its quaint
full sleeves. Edgar insisted on changing the
plates and putting on the tomato-salad; then
Polly officiated at the next course, bringing in
coffee, sliced oranges, and delicious cake from
the "Woman's Exchange."
"Can't I wipe the dishes ? asked Edgar,
when the feast was ended.

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

"They 're not going to be wiped, at least by
us. This is a great occasion, and the little girl
down-stairs is coming up to clear away the
dinner things."
Then there was the pleasant parlor again,
and when the candles were lighted in the old-
fashioned mirror over the fireplace, everything
wore a festive appearance. The guitar was
brought out, and Edgar sang college songs till
Mrs. Oliver grew so bright that she even
hummed a faint alto from her cozy place on
the sofa.
And then Polly must show Edgar how she
had made Austin Dobson's Milkmaid Song"
fit Nelly Bly," and she must teach him the
pretty words.
After this singing-lesson was over it was ten
o'clock, but up to this time Edgar had shown
no realizing sense of his engagements.
The dinner is over, and the theater party is
safe," thought Polly. Now comes the 'tug of
war,' that mysterious little game of billiards."
But Mrs. Oliver was equal to the occasion.
When Edgar looked at his watch, she said:
' Polly, run and get Mrs. Noble's last letter,
dear"; and then, when she was alone with
Edgar, My dear boy, I have a favor to ask
of you, and you must be quite frank if it is not
convenient for you to grant it. As to-morrow
will be Saturday, perhaps you have no recita-
tions, and if not, would it trouble you too much
to stay here all night and attend to something
for me in the morning? I will explain the
matter, and then you can answer me more
decidedly. I have received a letter from a
Washington friend who seems to think it possi-
ble that a pension maybe granted to me. He
sends a letter of introduction to General M--,
at the Presidio, who, he says, knew Colonel
Oliver, and will be able to advise me in the
matter. I am not well enough to go there for
some days, and of course I do not like to send
Polly alone. If you could go out with her, give
him the letter of introduction, and ask him
kindly to call upon us at his leisure, and find
out also if there is any danger in a little delay
just now while I am ill, it would be a very
great favor."
Of course I will, with all the pleasure in life,
Mrs. Oliver," replied Edgar, with the unspoken

thought, Confound it! There goes my game;
I promised the fellows to be there, and they '11
guy me for staying away! However, there 's
nothing else to do. I should n't have the face
to go out now and come in at one or two
o'clock in the morning."
Polly entered just then with the letter.
Edgar is kind enough to stay all night with
us, dear, and take you to the Presidio on the
pension business in the morning. If you will
see that his room is all right, 1 will say good
night now. Our little guest-chamber is down-
stairs, Edgar. I hope you will be very comfort-
able. Breakfast at half-past eight, please."
The door of Mrs. Howe's bedroom closed on
Edgar, and Polly sank exhausted on her bed.
Now, Mama, 'listen to my tale of woe!'
I got off at the wrong station,- yes, it was
stupid; but wait, perhaps I was led to be stu-
pid. I lost my way, could n't find Professor
Salazar's house, could n't find anything else.
As I was wandering about in a woodsy road,
trying to find a house of some kind, I heard
a crowd of boys singing vociferously as they
came through the trees. I did n't care to meet
them, all alone as I was,-though, of course,
there was nothing to be afraid of,-so I stepped
off the road behind some trees and bushes until
they should pass. It turned out to be half a
dozen university students, and at first I did n't
know that Edgar was among them. They were
teasing somebody to go over to San Francisco
for a dinner, then to the minstrels, and then to
wind up with a game of billiards, and other
gaieties which were to be prolonged indefi-
finitely. What dreadful things that may have
included I don't know. A little wretch
named 'Tony' did most of the teasing, and
he looked equal to planning any sort of mis-
chief. All at once I thought I recognized a
familiar voice. I peeped out, and sure enough it
was Edgar Noble whom they were coaxing. He
didn't want to go a bit,--I '11 say that for him,
-but they were determined that he should.
I did n't mind his going to dinners and min-
strels, of course, but when they spoke of being
out until after midnight, or to-morrow morning,
and when.one beetle-browed, common-looking
thing offered to lend him a 'tenner,' I thought of
the mortgage on the Noble ranch, and the

203

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

trouble there would be if Edgar should get into
debt, and I felt that I must do something to stop
him, especially as he said himself that every-
thing depended on his next examinations."
"But how did you accomplish it ? asked
Mrs. Oliver, sitting up in bed and glowing with
interest.
"They sat down by the roadside, smoking
and talking it over. There was n't another well-

born, well-bred looking young man in the "I
group. Edgar looked a prince among them, appoi:
and I was so ashamed of him for having such out th
friends! I was afraid they would stay there to thi
until dark, but they finally got up and walked should(
toward the station. I waited a few moments, banish
went softly along behind them, and when I was to din
near enough I cleared my throat (oh, it was a he wil
fearful moment!), and said,' I beg your pardon, be mi
but can you direct me to Professor Salazar's them.
house ?'- and then in a dramatic tone, 'Why, little
it is -is n't it?--Edgar Noble of Santa Bar- bliss!

'He joined me, of course,-oh! I can't
to tell you all the steps of the affair, I am
listed. Suffice it to say that he walked
professorr Salazar's with me to make
excuses, came over to the city with me,
up to the house (I trembling for fear
)uld slip through my fingers at any mo-
!); then, you know, he stayed to din-
I in terror all the time as the fatal hours
approached and de-
parted!), and there he
is, the captive of my
bow and spear,' tucked
in Mrs. Howe's best
bed,- thanks to your in-
genuity! I could never
have devised that last
plot. Mama, it was a
masterpiece "
You did a kind deed,
little daughter," said Mrs.
Oliver, with a kiss. "But
poor Mrs. Noble! What
$511 can we do for her ? We
cannot play policemen
all the time. We are too
.11 far from Edgar to know
S'.I his plans, and any inter-
-- ference of which he is
conscious would beworse
than nothing. I cannot
believe that he is far
wrong yet. He certainly
never appeared better;
so polite and thought-
ful and friendly. Well,
we must let the morrow
bring counsel."
hope that smirking, odious Tony is dis-
nted!" said Polly viciously, as she turned
e gas. I distinctly heard him tell Edgar
row a handkerchief over my hair if we
d pass any wild cattle! How I 'd like to
h him from this vicinity! Invite Edgar
ner next week, Mama; not too soon, or
1 suspect missionary work. Boys hate to
issionaried, and I 'm sure I don't blame
I hope he is happy down-stairs in his
prison! He ought to be, if ignorance is
,

204

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

CHAPTER VIII.
TWO FIRESIDE CHATS.
IT was five o'clock Saturday afternoon, and
Edgar Noble stood on the Olivers' steps, Mrs.
Oliver waving her hand from an upper window,
and Polly standing on the stairs saying good-by.
Come over to dinner some night, won't you,
Edgar?" she asked carelessly,-" any night
you like, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."
"Wednesday, please, as it comes first! said
Edgar, roguishly. May I help cook it? "
"You not only may, but you must. Good-
by."
Polly went up-stairs, and, after washing the
lunch-dishes in a reflective turn of mind which
did away with part of the irksomeness of the
task, went into the parlor and sat on a hassock
at her mother's feet.
A soft rain had begun to fall; the fire burned
brightly; the bamboo cast feathery shadows on
the wall; from a house across the street came
the sound of a beautiful voice singing,

Oh, holy night! the stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth! "

All was peaceful and homelike, if it would
only last, thought Polly.
"You are well to-night, Mamacita."
A look of repressed pain, crossed Mrs. Oli-
ver's face as she smoothed the bright head lying
in her lap. "Very comfortable, dear, and very
happy; as who would not be, with such a dar-
ling comfort of a daughter ? Always sunny,
always helpful these last dear weeks,-cook,
housekeeper, nurse, banker, all in one, with never
a complaint as one burden after another is laid
on her willing shoulders."
Don't, Mama! whispered Polly, seeking
desperately for her handkerchief. "I can stand
scoldings, but compliments always make me cry;
you know they do. Your whole duty is to be
well, well, well, and I '11 take care of everything
else."
"I've been thinking about Edgar, Polly, and
I have a plan, but I shall not think of urging it
against your will; you are the mistress of the
house nowadays."
"I know what it is," sighed Polly. "You
think we ought to take another boarder. A de-

sire for boarders is like a taste for strong drink:
once acquired, it is almost impossible to eradi-
cate it from the system."
I do think we ought to take this boarder.
Not because it will make a difference in our in-
come, but I am convinced that if Edgar can
have a pleasant home and our companionship
just at this juncture, he will break away from his
idle habits, and perhaps his bad associations,
and take a fresh start. I feel that we owe it to
our dear old friends to do this for them, if we
can. Of course, if it proves too great a tax upon
you, or if I should have another attack of ill-
ness, it will be out of the question; but-who
knows ?-perhaps two or three months will ac-
complish our purpose. He can pay me what-
ever he has been paying in Berkeley, less the
amount of his fare to and fro. We might have
little Yung Lee again, and Mrs. Howe will be
glad to rent her extra room. It has a fireplace,
and will serve for both bedroom and study if
we add a table and student-lamp."
I don't believe he will come," said Polly.
"We are all very well as a diversion, but as a
constancy we should pall upon him. I never
could keep up to the level I have been main-
taining for the last twenty-four hours, that is
certain. Besides, he will fancy he is going to
be watched and reported at headquarters in
Santa Barbara!"
I think very likely you are right; but per-
haps I can put the matter so that it will
strike him in some other light."
Very well, Mamacita; I 'm willing. It will
break up all our nice little two-ing, but we will
be his guardian angel. I will be his guardian
and you his angel, and oh! how he would dis-
like it if he knew it! But wait until odious
Mr. Tony sees him to-night! (What business is
it of his if my hair is red!) When he chaffs
him for breaking his appointment, I dare say
we shall never see him again."

"You are so jolly comfortable here! This
house is the next best thing to mother," said
Edgar, with boyish heartiness, as he stood on
the white goatskin with his back to the Oli-
vers' cheerful fireplace.
It was Wednesday evening of the next week.
Polly was clearing away the dinner things, and

205

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

Edgar had been arranging Mrs. Oliver's chair
and pillows and footstool like the gentle young
knight he was by nature.
What wonder that all the fellows, even
smirking Tony," liked him and sought his
company? He who could pull an oar, throw
a ball, leap a bar, ride a horse, or play a game
of skill as if he had been born for each
particular occupation,--what wonder that the
ne'er-do-wells and idlers and scamps and dull-
ards battered at his door continually and
begged him to leave his books and come out
and stir up things "!
If you think it is so 'jolly,' said Mrs. Oli-
ver, "how would you like to come here and
live with us a while ? "
This was a bombshell. The boy hesitated
naturally, being taken quite by surprise. (" Con-
found it!" he thought rapidly, "how shall I
get out of this scrape without being impolite!
They would n't give me one night out a week
if I came !") "I 'd like it immensely, you know,"
he said aloud, "and it 's awfully kind of you
to propose it, and I appreciate it, but I don't
think-I don't see, that is-how I could come,
Mrs. Oliver. In the first place, I 'm quite sure
my home people would dislike my intruding on
your privacy; and then,-well, you know I am
out in the evening occasionally, and should n't
like to disturb you; besides, I 'm sure Miss Polly
has her hands full now."
Of course you would be often out in the
evening, though I don't suppose you are a
'midnight reveler' exactly. You would simply
have a latch-key, and go out and come in as
you like. Mrs. Howe's room is very pleasant,
as you know; and you could study there before
your open fire, and join us when you felt like
it. Is it as convenient and pleasant for you to
live on this side of the bay, and go back and
forth ? "
Oh, yes! I don't mind that part of it."
("This is worse than the Inquisition; I don't
know but that she will get me in spite of every-
thing !")
(" Oh, dear!" thought Mrs. Oliver, "he does n't
want to come; and I don't want him to come,
and I must urge him to come, against his will.
How very disagreeable missionary work is, to
be sure! I sympathize with him, too. He is

afraid of petticoat government, and fears that
he will lose some of his precious liberty.")
"Besides, dear Mrs. Oliver," continued Ed-
gar, after an awkward pause, "I don't think
you are strong enough to have me here. I
believe you 're only proposing it for my
good. You know that I 'm in a forlorn stu-
dents' boarding-house, and you are anxious
to give me 'all the comforts of a home' for
my blessed mother's sake, regardless of your
own discomforts."
Come here a moment and sit beside me on
Polly's hassock. You were nearly three years
old when Polly was born. You were all stay-
ing with me that summer. Did you know that
you were my first boarders ? You were a tiny
fellow in kilts, very much interested in the
new baby, and very anxious to hold her. I can
see you now rocking the cradle as gravely as a
man. Polly has hard times and many sorrows
before her, Edgar! You are man enough to see
that I cannot stay with her much longer."
Edgar was too awed and too greatly moved
to answer.
"I should be very glad to have you with us,
both because I think we could in some degree
take the place of your mother and Margery,
and because I should be glad to feel that in any
sudden emergency (which I do not in the least
expect) we should have a near friend to lean
upon ever so little."
Edgar's whole heart went out in a burst of
sympathy and manly tenderness. In that mo-
ment he felt willing to give up every personal
pleasure, if he might lift a feather's weight of
care from the fragile woman who spoke to him
with such sweetness and trust. For there is
nothing hopeless save meanness and poverty of
nature; and any demand on Edgar Noble's
instinct of chivalrous protection would never be
discounted.
I will come gladly gladly, Mrs. Oliver,"
he said, "if only I can be of service; though I
fear it will be all the other way. Please bor-
row me for a son, just to keep me in training,
and I '11 try to bear my honors worthily."
"Thank you, dear boy. Then it is settled, if
you are sure that the living in the city will not
interfere with your studies; that is the main
thing. We all look to you to add fresh laurels

POLLY OLIVER'S PROBLEM.

to your old ones. Are you satisfied with your
college life thus far ?"
(" They have n't told her anything. That's
good," thought Edgar.) Oh, yes; fairly well!
I don't-I don't go in for being a 'dig,' Mrs.
Oliver. I shall never be the valedictorian, and
all that sort of thing; it does n't pay. Who ever
hears of valedictorians twenty years after gradu-
ation? Class honors don't amount to much."
"I suppose they can be overestimated; but
they must prove some sort of excellence which
will stand one in good stead in after years. I
should never advise a boy or girl to work for
honors alone; but if, after doing one's very
best, the honors come naturally, they are very
pleasant."
"Half the best scholars in our class are
prigs," said Edgar; discontentedly. "Always
down on the live fellows who want any sport.
Sometimes I wish I had never gone to college,
at all. Unless you deny yourself every bit of
pleasure, and live the life of a hermit, you can't
take any rank. My father expects me to get a
hundred and one per cent. in every study, and
thinks I ought to rise with the lark and go to
bed with the chickens. I don't know whether
he ever sowed any wild oats; if he did, it was
so long ago that he has quite forgotten I must
sow mine some time. He ought to be thankful
they are such a harmless sort."
I don't understand boys very well," said
Mrs. Oliver, smilingly. "You see,- I never
have had any to study. You must teach me
a few things. Now, about this matter of wild
oats. Why is it so necessary that they should
be sown ? Is Margery sowing hers ?"
"I don't know that they are necessities,"

laughed Edgar, coloring. Perhaps they are
only luxuries."
Mrs. Oliver looked at the fire soberly. "I
know there may be plenty of fine men who
have a discreditable youth to look back upon -
a youth finally repented of and atoned for; but
that is rather a weary process, I should think,
and they are surely no stronger men because of
the 'wild oats,' but rather in spite of them."
"I suppose so," sighed Edgar; "but it 's so
easy for women to be good! I know you were
born a saint, to begin with. You don't know
what it is to be in college, and to want to do
everything that you can't and ought n't, and
nothing that you can and should, and get
all tangled up in things you never meant to
touch. However, we '11 see'!"
Polly peeped in at the door very softly. "They
have n't any light; that 's favorable. He 's
sitting on my hassock; he need n't suppose
he is going to have that place! I think she has
her hand on his arm-yes, she has! Very
well, then; it is settled. I '11 go back and put
the salt fish in soak for my boarder's break-
fast. I seem to have my hands rather full!
A house to keep, an invalid mother, and now
a boarder,-the very thing I vowed that I
never would have, another boarder,- what
grandmama would have called an 'unstiddy,'
boy boarder!"
And as Polly clattered the pots and pans, the
young heathen in the parlor might have heard
her fresh voice singing with great energy:

Shall we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,-
Shall we to men benighted
The lamp of light deny?

(To be continued.)

1893.]

A SUGGESTION TO TEACHERS.

IF teachers mean by examination
To show the scholars' information,
Why do they carefully seek out
Such difficult things to ask about?

These are the questions, as a rule,
The teachers ask us in our school:
" What 's the time in the Congo State
When Persian clocks are striking eight ?"
" Halve the square of seventy-three,
And what will a tenth of sixteen be?"
" What was the reason Charlemagne
Sent his great-grandaunt to Spain?"
" Explain what came of the Gothic war,
And what the Turks were fighting for
When Venice conquered Charles Martel,
And ancient Constantinople fell."
" Name the products of Peru,
And all the rulers of Timbuctoo."
" Point out the errors in the words,
'Green cheeses ain't not made of curds;'
'Him was not the friend of he;'
'He had n't ought to written me.'"

Now, for instance, we '11 suppose;
They wish to show what a fellow knows:
Then they '11 be glad of a few suggestions
As to a set of useful questions.
"What did one Columbus do
In October, 1492 ?"
" Will some bright scholar kindly say
Which is 'Independence Day'?"
"What little girl will be so candid
As to tell us when the pilgrims landed?"
"The war of 1812, my dear,
Was fought in what particular year ?"
" Kindly tell us, if you will,
What nations fought at Bunker Hill ?"
"Who cut down a cherry-tree,
And helped to make a nation free ?"
" Name a certain English queen
Who still upon her throne is seen."

If teachers only had the tact
To hit upon the proper fact,
Recitations then would be
More creditable to them and me.
T. J.

THE WANDERING MINSTREL.

WHAT ho, within! Good honest folk,
Here 's one will sing you ballads quaint
As carven shapes of fiend and saint
That deck your beams of blackened oak.
What ho, mine host! Here 's one at last
Who comes to solace all your guests
With merry songs, that made their nests
Among the gables of the Past.

The minstrel's face is ruddy brown,
And like a viol's cheek doth shine;
His mirthful eyes, as bright as wine,
Have seen full many a famous town.
And when he plays, the pleasant sound
Hath such a kind and wondrous power
You think you smell the wine in flower,
Although the snow be on the ground.

Then let him in; he knows the way
To sweeten loaf and brighten fire;
He sings of crested knight and squire,

Of lovely dame and friendly fay;
Of turbaned Paynims dark and fierce,
Of elfin circles emerald green,
Of blades by wizard art made keen,
And shields no mortal dart could pierce.

And though your coin must pay his pains,
Not all for gold he plies his art,
But holiday is in his heart
E'en while he stands and counts his gains.

To him should every door unbar
At Christmas-tide; for then he sings
Old chansons of the three wise Kings,
Of Orient, and the mystic Star.
" Nol! No*l!" the carol rings
Through cold blue night, afar, afar,
And bears, to cots where shepherds are,
White thoughts, that throng on angel-wings.

Margaret Hamilton.

A SUGGESTION TO TEACHERS.

IF teachers mean by examination
To show the scholars' information,
Why do they carefully seek out
Such difficult things to ask about?

These are the questions, as a rule,
The teachers ask us in our school:
" What 's the time in the Congo State
When Persian clocks are striking eight ?"
" Halve the square of seventy-three,
And what will a tenth of sixteen be?"
" What was the reason Charlemagne
Sent his great-grandaunt to Spain?"
" Explain what came of the Gothic war,
And what the Turks were fighting for
When Venice conquered Charles Martel,
And ancient Constantinople fell."
" Name the products of Peru,
And all the rulers of Timbuctoo."
" Point out the errors in the words,
'Green cheeses ain't not made of curds;'
'Him was not the friend of he;'
'He had n't ought to written me.'"

Now, for instance, we '11 suppose;
They wish to show what a fellow knows:
Then they '11 be glad of a few suggestions
As to a set of useful questions.
"What did one Columbus do
In October, 1492 ?"
" Will some bright scholar kindly say
Which is 'Independence Day'?"
"What little girl will be so candid
As to tell us when the pilgrims landed?"
"The war of 1812, my dear,
Was fought in what particular year ?"
" Kindly tell us, if you will,
What nations fought at Bunker Hill ?"
"Who cut down a cherry-tree,
And helped to make a nation free ?"
" Name a certain English queen
Who still upon her throne is seen."

If teachers only had the tact
To hit upon the proper fact,
Recitations then would be
More creditable to them and me.
T. J.

THE WANDERING MINSTREL.

WHAT ho, within! Good honest folk,
Here 's one will sing you ballads quaint
As carven shapes of fiend and saint
That deck your beams of blackened oak.
What ho, mine host! Here 's one at last
Who comes to solace all your guests
With merry songs, that made their nests
Among the gables of the Past.

The minstrel's face is ruddy brown,
And like a viol's cheek doth shine;
His mirthful eyes, as bright as wine,
Have seen full many a famous town.
And when he plays, the pleasant sound
Hath such a kind and wondrous power
You think you smell the wine in flower,
Although the snow be on the ground.

Then let him in; he knows the way
To sweeten loaf and brighten fire;
He sings of crested knight and squire,

Of lovely dame and friendly fay;
Of turbaned Paynims dark and fierce,
Of elfin circles emerald green,
Of blades by wizard art made keen,
And shields no mortal dart could pierce.

And though your coin must pay his pains,
Not all for gold he plies his art,
But holiday is in his heart
E'en while he stands and counts his gains.

To him should every door unbar
At Christmas-tide; for then he sings
Old chansons of the three wise Kings,
Of Orient, and the mystic Star.
" Nol! No*l!" the carol rings
Through cold blue night, afar, afar,
And bears, to cots where shepherds are,
White thoughts, that throng on angel-wings.

Margaret Hamilton.

I_: --- _; .. .
II I

---f I-- I -

:- .-

THE WANDERING MINSTREL.
ENGRAVED BY S. G. PUTNAM, FROM A PAINTING BY LOUIS LELOIR, BY PERMISSION OF THE METROPOLITAN IMUSEUMI OF ART.
VOL. XX. 14. 209

RE;

THE Scavenger had gone to bed; but, as
we knew from experience, far from being asleep,
she was listening to every word of our con-
versation, and was storing it in her memory
with the intention of quoting it at some future
time to our discomfiture.
She was only twelve years old, and, being
the youngest, was doomed to run the family
errands. Though she rebelled each time she
was asked to go anywhere, yet in her heart she
gloried in any chance to scour the neighbor-
hood and find out whatever was new or inter-
esting. In her innocent babyhood she had been
christened Lillian, but when, as a growing child,
tucks were let out, and she began to depend
upon old iron, bottles, and the contents of the
rag-bag as the chief sources of her income, and
consequently was forced to collect the articles
of her trade with much unscrupulousness and
energy, we bestowed upon her that eminently
more descriptive title, "The Scavenger."
By this time you have learned that we were
poor. Mother was down-stairs sewing, and sup-
posed that we four girls had gone to bed; but
three of us sat before the dying fire and be-
moaned our poverty. We were Vivian, Clara,
and Nan. I am Nan, the eldest of the sisters.
Vivian and I have no nicknames, but Clara is
called Herc," short for Hercules,- a well-won
honor bestowed upon her in recognition of her
prowess in such feats as lifting the kitchen stove,
moving the bookcase, or beating carpets.
"To be poor is hard, at any time," sighed
she, "but it is doubly hard at Christmas. Here

it is the middle of December, and we have not
a dollar among us."
My heart aches for mother," said Vivian
"She is fretting herself ill over the bills."
I should like to scalp the butcher!" mur-
mured Here, in serious meditation.
An odd sound from the bed, a half strangled
sob, caused us to look at each other in surprise.
What is the matter, darling ? asked Vivian,
going over to the bed and trying unsuccessfully
to lift from the Scavenger's face the bedclothes
which were dragged over her features and
clutched fiercely from beneath. Tell your
Vivian what troubles you, dear."
After being adjured several times, the grief-
stricken one raised a corner of the bedclothes
and sobbed forth in a roar of woe:
Mother is sick! and all because she has no
money. Yesterday I went into her room for
some pins, and I found her on her knees by
.the bedside, crying and praying,-f-raying in
the daytime! Ow-w!" and the long-drawn sob
betrayed that in the last statement she fancied
her recital had reached its acme of distress.
"Don't cry, little girl; don't cry. Things
may grow brighter by and by," said Vivian,
soothingly, but her own voice trembled. In
fact, the sudden tears also started to Clara's
eyes and to mine as we guessed at the suffering
our little mother had so bravely kept from us.
Vivian brushed the damp hair from the child's
forehead, and petted her into a more resigned
frame of mind. When she found out after a
while that the much-comforted Scavenger was

C-

A RANDOM SHOT.

sobbing merely for her own private enjoyment,
and reveling in the way the bed shook with
each convulsive throe, Vivian came back to her
old seat by the fire, and asked:
"Is there no way in which we girls could
make a little money and help mother along?
Is there nothing we can do ?"
"We have not an accomplishment in the
world," I said, a little bitterly.
"Here might give music-lessons!" said a
voice from the bed, with a sobbing cackle of
dismal mirth.
The sting of this suggestion lay in the fact
that Clara (than whom no one had less ear for
music) in moments of dejection was given to
twanking viciously on an old banjo, which she
played with so little melody and so much energy
as to drive the rest of us to distraction.
Here broke into an amiable burst of laugh-
ter, then sank back immediately into her former
state of depression.
Vivian sighed wearily, and fell into a reverie
that must have been far sadder than we others
could guess.
Two years before she had been engaged to be
married to a young man who was so affection-
ate, so boyish, so full of fun that he soon won
mother's heart as completely as he had won
Vivian's. As for us girls, we simply adored him.
Brother Bob," for so we soon learned to
call him, was summoned to England just three
months before the day set for the wedding, to
take possession of a fortune which had been left
him unexpectedly. And then came the sad,
sad news that on the vessel's return trip he was
drowned.
After that news everything went wrong with
us. We had to give up our Philadelphia home
and move to San Francisco, expecting in a
vague way to do better; but we were disap-
pointed, and only by severest economy were we
enabled to keep a roof over us. Poverty is a
skeleton that may be kept decently in his closet
until Christmas-time; then he comes forth and
rattles his bones under one's very nose.
Indeed, the prospect was so dismal that it
actually prevented us three tired girls from
going to bed. We sat around the grate, look-
ing intently at the fire, as if trying to wrest a
helpful suggestion from the fast-dropping ashes.

This second silence had lasted fully ten min-
utes, when it was again cheered by a speech
from the bed.
See here," said the muffled voice. I have
a splendid idea, but I am afraid you-you
things will laugh at me if you don't like it."
Why, Lil, of course we won't !" said Vivian,
reproachfully.
Thus encouraged, the flushed and blinking
Scavenger struggled into a kneeling position and
addressed us with dignity.
"You know our old washerwoman, Biddy
Conelly ? "
Of course we did, and said so.
"You know the paper-cake-and-boot-button-
shop she keeps ?"
"Well ? "
"Biddy is laid up with rheumatism, and the
shop is shut."
"Well?"
Well! defiantly, as the crisis grew nearer,
why can't we keep the shop until Biddy grows
better, and make a kind of Christmas place of
it with cornucopias, and Christmas-tree things,
and have lots of fun, and earn lots of money ? "
Silence reigned. Breathless and astounded,
we could only look at each other.
Then what a gabble of tongues! what a
deluge of fors and against! what a torrent of
questions and answers! what a delicious flavor
of romance! what a contagious excitement and
freshness there was about the whole plan!
"Shopkeepers? Delightful idea! We might
be able to pay all the bills and buy mother a
new dress! said Vivian.
I shall be able to keep my rag-money all for
myself, and I '11 buy a bicycle," said the san-
guine originator of the plan.
"Let us go to bed and gain the strength
needed to unroll the project before mother in
the morning," concluded I, with wisdom.
Well, we carried our point. Mother at first
would not consent; but the gentleman who
rented our front parlor spoke loudly on our side
by deserting the premises without having paid
his last month's bill; and we used this deplora-
ble incident to such advantage that mother fin-
ally gave in.
Two of us rushed at once to Biddy's, and had
an entirely satisfactory interview with her. Not

A RANDOM SHOT.

only did she refuse to charge us rent for the
shop and stock on hand, but she lent us a little
money that we might lay in goods of an es-
sentially holiday nature.
There was much to be done before we could
throw open our establishment to an indulgent
public. At home mother and Vivian worked
untiringly--mother crocheting and knitting,
Vivian dressing dolls and painting little pic-
tures for our show-window. At the store, Lil,
Clara, and I were equally busy, and afforded
Biddy, who lived in rooms above,
much pleasing excitement.
Clara, especially, meritedmuch
praise. Slender and girlish as
she was in figure, she performed
many manly feats, especially in
the way of carpentry; and when
it came to cleaning, the rest of
us were nowhere beside her.
Cleanliness is the thief of
time," she panted; but it 's the
only way to be healthy, wealthy,
and wise."
As we intended to be "shop-
keepers" for two weeks only,
and, moreover, as we were such
comparative strangers in the city
that we had no arrogant ac -
quaintances to shock, the day
on which we opened our little
store found us four of the most
expectant, most excited, happiest
girls in the world.
Oh, you must hear a short de-
scription of our dear shop! It was
on Third street, almost an hour's
ride from our house. It had only -
one show-window, and was a bak-
ery, aconfectioner's, and a station-
er's, all rolled into one. But our
chief pride was in our Christmas goods and tree
ornaments. We considered our assortment of
dolls and our stock of tin toys unrivaled; and
we reached our crowning holiday effect by means
of wreaths and ropes of fragrant evergreen.
At the back, opening out of the store, was
a small room; and before its bright fire we sat
and chatted whenever we were off duty. We
made fun of everything and everybody; we

roared at the poorest jokes; we were in a
touch-and-go state of good humor from morn-
ing till night. Indeed, we look back upon
those days as the merriest of our lives.
Our first customer! The words send a thrill
through me even now. We fought so for the
honor of first standing behind the counter
(before the arrival of any buyer, of course),
that we finally drew lots for it; and the Scaven-
ger won. She made us retire into the back
room, and closed the door; then she triumph-

"OUR FIRST CUSTOMER."

antly mounted guard alone. The bell tinkled !
A child came in! We three in exile pressed
our faces to the curtained glass door, and breath-
lessly watched the proceedings. Child pointed
to a tin horse; Lil handed it to him; child
nodded; handed it back; said something; Lil
wrapped horse in paper; gave it again to child;
child took laboriously a coin from his stuffed
pocket; laid it on counter; child went out.

212

A RANDOM SHOT.

Simultaneously we burst into the shop and
cried: Let us see it! Show us the money!"
First blood for me!" shrieked the Scav-
enger, dashing a ten-cent piece into the till.
Vivian, who was bookkeeper, entered the ten
cents amid frenzied rejoicings. Soon after her
first sale, Lil shoved her head into the sitting-
room and observed with a quiet chuckle:
I say, Vivian, a young man was just stray-
ing past, and caught sight of your paintings;
and they were so bad they made him ill."
They did n't," cried Clara, indignantly.
Did, too. He gave one look and then
reeled, positively reeled away."
Vivian was so used to having her pictures ridi-
culed that she merely smiled and said nothing.
Late in the afternoon Lillian and I were on
duty together. We were very tired, all of us,
for we had had an extremely busy day, the
stream of customers being almost an unbroken
one. Lest the uninitiated jump to the conclu-
sion that we were on the high road to fortune,
the explanation is necessary that very few of
the purchasers expended more than a dime at
a time. Often, indeed, the worth of a nickel suf-
ficed for their modest needs. Often we suffered
the shock of seeing them go out without having
bought anything at all. To Lillian and me was
vouchsafed the glory of having a customer out
of the ordinary. He came at twilight, just
before the lights were lit-an elderly-looking,
heavily bearded gentleman with a gruff voice.
He glanced sharply at both of us, and then
said to me in a nervous, rambling way:
Er- ah-got any paper ? note-paper ? "
Yes, sir; plenty."
Give me-er-five dollars' worth."
Five dollars' worth ? I repeated in amaze-
ment.
Urn-yes."
When the enormous package was at last
presented to him, he paid for it promptly, but
was not yet satisfied.
Have you- any, well, er-any nice, first-
class gold pens ? he asked again, in his uncer-
tain fashion.
As he was looking directly at them, an an-
swer was unnecessary, so I silently placed the
tray of pens before him. He took five, at two
dollars each I tied them up for him, blushing

hotly the while and feeling very much ashamed,
for I had come to the mortifying conclusion
that he was throwing his money into our till
from benevolent motives only, and did not really
need a solitary pen or a single sheet of paper.
Nice store-very," he said, gruffly yet affably,
catching the Scavenger's glassy and dismayed
stare. "Am setting up a Christmas tree--will
want cart-loads of things. Have got-er- lots
of children." Here he described with his gloved
hand an immense arc in the air to illustrate the
size and number of his children.
All will have to have presents. Must go
now. Will drop in again. Good-by."
The door closed behind him. Lil and I, after
an astounded look at each other, rushed into
the little parlor to tell the girls.
"A nice sort of customer to have. I wish
he would come again," said Vivian.
"He 's going to; he said so."
"Was he young or old ? asked Hercules.
Old," said I.
"Young said Lillian.
He had a gray beard."
"Well, the eye part of him was young-real
young," insisted Lil; and the subject was dropped.
When the eventful, delightful day ended we
ran up-stairs to bid good night to Mrs. Conelly.
It's a foine stroke o' luck yez been havin'.
Oi 've sot by this windy, and it 's wan hundred
and twinty-noine paple oi 've counted thot 's
gone in an' out o' the sture," she declared.
"Impossible !" we cried.
"Oi 've counted, and Oi know," she main-
tained stolidly. "Sixty-noine gone in and sixty-
noine cum out. Wan of thim thot wint in
did n't go in at all, but kem up here and began
pumpin' me about yez. Sorra a wurrud did
Oi give him. Oi only tould him where yez
lived, phwat yer names was, and how yez kem
to be kapin' sture. Thin he tould me not to
mintion him to yez, and not to tell yez whether
he was a man or woman. An' Oi won't. Yez
can't dhrag it out o' me."
"Did he- or she--have a long gray
beard? I asked anxiously.
Sorra a hair on his face," she declared; add-
ing, with a virtuous regard for truth, barrin' an
eyebrow or so."
As we could obtain no further information

x893.]

213

A RANDOM SHOT.

from her, we hurried homeward. It was
charmingly dark, and we felt very independent
and businesslike at being out at such an un-
usual hour.
Mother had a hot supper for us, and whether
we ate most or talked most, she declared she
could not tell.
When our hunger and excitement were both
abated, we made the discovery that mother
had had a little excitement of her own, and
that she was trying to keep it from us. But
we pounced upon her, like a pack of hyenas,
with:
Now, mother, what is it? You are a bad
hand at keeping a secret. Tell us. Out with it!"
Between laughing and crying she finally told
us all-that she had rented the two parlors to
a very rich old gentleman, who had not only
given a high price for them, but had positively
paid three months in advance. She concluded
by drawing a great bunch of money-real
greenbacks -from her pocket and fluttering
them above her head, like little flags.
Our youngest relieved her feelings in a fan-
tastic dance.
The next day at the store was a counterpart
of the first, except that the reckless buyer did
not appear. For three days he kept away, but
he performed prodigies when he did return.
Vivian, having stayed home with mother, missed
much of the fun, and had to hear second-hand
a tale highly complimentary to herself; for the
old gentleman bought all of her paintings one
after another, and stuffed them out of sight in
his immense pockets. They seemed only to
whet his appetite for more. "I will take--I
want- give me that," and he pointed abruptly
and without previous consideration to the most
gorgeous doll in our collection.
The poor little doll-loving Scavenger sighed
deeply as she beheld her favorite go head first
into one of those rapacious pockets, whence the
paper-covered legs waved her a sad adieu.
Still unappeased, our customer demanded in
his hearty way, Now then, fetch me out Christ-
mas-tree fixings; lots, please."
At this stage of events, Hercules, who was
waiting upon him, blushed a painful red, and
said with meek determination; "No, sir; I 'd
rather not "

"Bless my soul! -what 's the matter with
you?" demanded he, bluntly.
Through her desperation Here answered
honestly: I don't think you really want any-
thing you are buying, sir "
He broke into a spasm of gruff, good-natured
laughter, but growled with evident sincerity that
he needed all he had bought and more, and
would have to go elsewhere if she refused to
supply him; and on her showing him what he
asked for, he purchased articles enough to deco-
rate a banyan-tree, and departed with the prom-
ise that he would drop in to-morrow."

The night before Christmas We had paid all
the bills, we had secretly bought mother and one
another little presents; and the dear store which
had enabled us to do so much was to pass into
the hands of Biddy's cousin, who had come to
take charge on our departure.
The delightful nervousness of Christmas Eve
was upon us all, and we all four were gabbling
together in the center of the shop, of which we
were so soon to lose possession.
"Well, I just love the old man who bought
such loads of things!" exclaimed Lillian. "We
would n't have done half so well but for him."
"My goodness!" said Clara, "speak of an
angel and you hear his wings!"
His wings made a lot of noise, for he burst in
with his usual hearty clatter; but, instead of
dashing to the counter as was his wont, he stood
looking steadily at Vivian, who blushed and
trembled under his gaze. And then, then- the
cheery old fellow- what did he do but rush at
our lovely Vivian and clasp her in his arms!
It almost seemed that she had been put into
one of those pockets, so completely did she dis-
appear in the overcoat's embrace.
Before we, an indignant trio, had time to
remonstrate, Vivian had torn herself away from
him, and was looking at him less in anger than
in an undefined terror, that yet was not terror.
"Vivian! My Vivian! As his voice rang
through the room, our pulses leaped with a
strange remembrance, and Vivian, almost un-
conscious with joy, flung herself of her own
free will into his arms.
Then what a crazy set we were! "Brother
Bob!" "Dear Bob!" "Not drowned, but

A RANDOM SHOT.

come to life again!" We shouted, we laughed,
we cried; we all became like raving lunatics in
our mad happiness. I found myself crying bit-
terly, all for no reason, over the Scavenger in a
corner, while she was shouting, "Bob! Bob!
Bob !" at intervals, like a demented calliope.
When we were the least bit calmed, Bob
sent us into hysterics again by putting his wig
and beard into his pocket. And then we saw
the dear remembered face !
My own, my beloved Vivian! he cried.
The glad tears were running down his face
quite as freely as down ours.
Vivian said never a word, but clung to Bob's
arm like one in a dream. How we got into
the street we never clearly remembered, but I
know we found ourselves dashing homeward
at a rousing pace, and all talking together.
We did n't want to be heard, we only wanted
to talk. Still we were keenly conscious of Bob's
narrative. He told us how he lost track of
us after he was saved from the lost ship, no-
body seeming to know where we had gone;
how, at the end of a two years' search, a faint
clue had sent him to San Francisco; how he
had seen in our shop-window Vivian's paint-
ing of our old Pennsylvania home, and had
recognized it; how he had learned about us
from Biddy; and how he had determined to
mystify us and haunt the sture" until he
could get a chance of finding Vivian behind
the counter.
Here we are at home. Don't tell us any
more," commanded Lil. Save it for mother."
On the door-step we formed, in whispers, an
elaborate scheme for mother's mystification.
Bob was to stay outside, while we went in and
made mother believe we had brought a home-
less waif with us. Then she was to go out,

and bring him in to the light of her hospi-
table fireside; and he was to fall upon his
knees and disclose himself--tableau/ Bob as-
sented with cheerful readiness, and we, after a
violent ring at the bell, waited in palpitating
expectation.
The door opened; we crowded past mother
and tried to force her away from the door, while
we gabbled, "Oh, let us tell you. We knew
you would n't be angry, and we brought home
with us a poor, old tramp with no home and
no-" Here mother gently freed herself,
poked her dear, pretty head out of doors, and
said placidly: Come in, Bob."
We were petrified. She knew all about it!
Don't try to deceive your poor old mother,
girls," she said, throwing open the parlor doors,
and- Well, words fail me. At one end of
the blazingly lighted room stood' an immense
Christmas tree, dazzling with candles, and bear-
ing on its drooping branches, besides myriads
of costly gifts, every single article we had sold
our old man." It was like a child's dream of
a tree. In an arm-chair by the fire sat Biddy
Conelly, beaming happily upon us like a homely
old fairy.
"'Then Brother Bob is the 'rich old gentle-
man' who rented the rooms, and you knew
it!" I cried, as light suddenly began to dawn
upon me.
Through the blissful but tear-dewed silence
"came a still voice":
Oi did n't know thot it wor the gintleman
thot died, but Oi 'm glad Oi held me tongue
aboud him, or-I ax yez-where would 'a'
been the surprise of it ?"
But Here is looking admiringly at mother,
and gasps at last: Mama dear, I did n't know
you could be so underhanded!"

215

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE

ANCIENTS.

BY J. O. DAVIDSON.

COMBAT OF GALLEYS.

To the marine architect or artist there is no
more interesting study than that of the growth
of the modern ship from its earliest forms. An-
cient ships of war and of commerce equally
interest him; but as he studies the sculptures,
the coins, and the writings of the ancients, he
finds that records of war-ships far outnumber
those of the ships of commerce.
Among the ancient nations, the Greeks, the
Romans, and Carthaginians were by far the
best ship-builders, and, judging from the de-
scription of their works, as well as from the
images upon coins, their craft must have been
elegant, swift, and seaworthy-more than can
be said for many of the more showy productions
of the ship-yards of Britain, France, and Spain
even so late as the middle ages.

To the uninformed the statement that some
of the ancient war-craft were over three hun-
dred feet in length seems incredible; for a com-
parison immediately made between them and
modern "ocean greyhounds," and a glance at
such huge ships as the City of Rome or the
" Etruria," would seem to discredit the state-
ment. Facts are facts, however, and there is
no doubt that ancient vessels were nearly as
large as those of to-day.
There is no question now that the ships of
the ancients made extended voyages urged by
oars alone, or occasionally, when the wind
was fair, by sails. A thousand oarsmen (in re-
lays) were sometimes required to man the
sweeps, besides a crew of five hundred sail-
ors and soldiers; and the splendid vision comes

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

before the mind's eye of a fleet of these ancient
war-ships moving swiftly along the white villa
dotted shores of Greece or Italy, or majestically
sweeping into some mirror-like harbor, and with
flashing oars, waving banners, and trumpets sa-
luting the setting of the sun.
The three ancient nations I have named were
foremost in maritime enterprise, and the great
kingdom of Egypt across
the Mediterranean was
far behind; not that the
people of that country
lacked bravery or the
spirit of commerce, but
their religious beliefs
stood in the way. Their
priests taught them that
the sea was a "swal-
lower of rivers." The
Nile, that great "mother
of the land," the giver
of all blessings, always
generous, flowed con-
tinually into the great
swallowerr," which took
all that was offered but
returned nothing save
monsters and wrecks. To
so great a degree was
this silly notion spread
among the people, that
almost all foreign in-
tercourse by way of the
sea was discouraged.
Mariners, whether com-
ing to anchor peaceably
at their doors, or thrown '
in shipwreck on their
coasts, were alike treat-
ed with suspicion and
avoidance, or even cruel-
ty. Certainly it is not
strange that to Tyre
and Sidon, their near neighbors, was left the
leadership in commerce and ship-building which
has made those two cities famous in history.
We are able to make from old records very
fair models of the war-ships of the ancients. One
writer describes the heptareme used by Pyrrhus,
king of Epirus, and also the great galley of

Ptolemy Philopater,-the Great Eastern" of
the East,--propelled by forty banks of oars.
This statement, however, is questioned, for, how-
ever plain the descriptions of these old war-ships
may be, no one has yet shown the precise man-
ner in which forty banks of oars were worked.
A bank of oars, according to our modern ideas,
means a row or line of oars on one deck; and

GALLEYS IN ACTION.

while there are many pictures and sculptures of
galleys, they show nothing more than a trireme,
that is, a ship of three tiers or banks, an arrange-
ment which, however uncomfortable for the men
whose duty or fate it was to handle the top
bank of oars, is readily recognized as a pos-
sibility. But how a ship of forty banks of oars,

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

or even of ten, was arranged, puzzles our im-
agination. '
John Charnock, a very able writer upon
marine architecture, in the year 18oo sub-
mitted a theory which ingeniously supposes
the word "bank" to have meant a group of
oars, or the men who worked them; and he
gives the restoration of a war-ship of the first
class, constructed in a manner plainly show-
ing how there could be room for three tiers of
oars on each side, in groups of five, on a ship
the size of Ptolemy's, which was four hundred
and eighty feet long, fifty-seven feet wide, eighty
feet high at the stern, was steered by four oars
each forty-five feet in length, and carried a
crew of "4000 rowers, and 400 other persons
necessary to navigate the ship." However mar-
velous the statement regarding such a craft

hope that at some future time new (or rather, old)
light upon this subject may in like manner dis-
close the arrangement of the forty banks. The
finding of the mummy of Pharaoh Rameses II.

PTOLEMY'S SHIP.

in its desert tomb quite recently,* explains, by
its inscriptions, several historical mysteries; and
the discovery of the almost entire hull of one
of the Viking ships of the Norsemen, in a bur-
ial mound near Christiania, encourages us still
further in our hope. Furthermore, when it is
found by measurements that in shape and size
the Viking ship is almost identical with that
latest triumph of the naval architect, the Volun-
teer," we can rest assured that, when discovered,

PYRRHUS'S GALLEY.

managed by oars under the forty-bank arrange-
ment, it is reduced, under Mr. Charnock's theory,
to a possibility, and so far as the size of the '
ship is concerned, to a question merely of the
desires and means of the builders. Mr. Car-
tault, the author of an interesting work on the
subject, writing of the arrangement of oars on
these great vessels, declares that no theories
can quite agree with the positive statements of
ancient writers; so that at the present day we
are still as much in the dark concerning this very
interesting problem as we are concerning the A BIREME
manner in which the pyramids of Egypt were
built. Discoveries are being constantly made, the explanation of the forty banks of oars will
however, -that clear up quite as obscure points be as convincing and natural as the problem
in history, and we have therefore good reason to is now puzzling.
Now in the Boulak Museum.

218

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

The voyages of the ancient ships were often
long,-for example, that of the Goths from
Sicily in the Mediterranean around to the coast
of Holland; and, if the writers of the middle
ages considered the statements of such deeds to
be fabulous, they must have formed their judg-
ment more from lack of similar ability in their
own vessels than anything else. Compare the
length and speedy lines of one of the old galleys,
and their beautiful proportions, with the tower-
like, Chinese-pagoda style of naval architec-
ture of the middle ages. A mere glance at the
picture of the "Great Harry," or of some of
the famous ships of the Spanish Armada, will
show the difference; but when a comparison is
made of the seas for which the two styles of
ships were constructed, we may not smile at the
builders of those towering, melon-sided old war-
riors any more than at the seemingly im-
probable voyages of the ancients. The blue
Mediterranean was not the rough Bay of Biscay,
or the turbulent North Sea, or the Channel at
Dover; and while the Great Harry or "San-
tissima Trinidad," built for the high choppy
seas of the North, might easily have been out-
stripped in a voyage on the inland sea by
Ptolemy's ship with its thousand oarsmen, yet
we can hardly doubt that the galley, with its
great length and small width, would soon have
been racked or twisted to pieces in the rougher
Northern waters. Both styles of craft were de-
signed for the waters they were to know, and
the ancients, with their many seaports, where
they could shelter at night or in stormy weather,
might work their way along coasts and amid
shoals and currents where even a modern steam-
frigate would be at a disadvantage. The Duke
of Northumberland made a voyage to India
by way of the Cape of Good Hope, in 1594, in
a "galuzabra," which was but a modernized
form of galley.
And those old-time shipwrights, in spite of
the generally accepted belief that sheathing was
an invention of the middle ages, were well
acquainted with various methods of sheathing
the bottom of a ship, not alone for preserva-
tion, but for freer progress through the water.
It is recorded that hardened hides were firmly
nailed to ships' bottoms, and we are also told
that when the remains of Trajan's galley were
raised from Lake Riccio, where it had lain for

over thirteen hundred years, the pine and cypress
of which it was built had endured, and were

TYPE OF VENETIAN GALLEY.

then in so sound a state as to be/nearly in-
credible." The bottom was, according to the
modern and easily comprehended scientific term,
' doubled,' the seams had evidently been calked
with linen, and the whole exterior part was care-
fully smeared or paid with a coat of Greek
pitch, over which was brought an exterior coat-
ing, or what now is called a sheathing,' formed
of lead rolled or beaten to a proper thinness

. '"

" GREAT HARRY."

and closely attached to the bottom by a suffi-
cient number of small copper nails."
The modern constructor must remember that
the early ships were likewise good carriers; else
how could the obelisk now at Rome, which once

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

stood before the temple of the sun at Heliopolis,
have been removed from the Nile to the Tiber ?
It is 115 feet in length, and weighs not less than
1500oo tons.
How the great English war-ship Harry
Grace a Dieu" could ever have stood upright
under such a mass of lofty cabins and top-
hamper as she is pictured with is a marvel; the
drawing of her bow alone, shown upon this
page, indicates but little stability. Nor do the

"HARRY GRACE A DIEU."

bows of several more of the large ships of that
age show any more seaworthiness.
The Greek and the Roman galleys when com-
pared with the ships of the middle ages show
not only greater stability but fitness for many
uses besides that of merely cutting the water.
In one we find at the water's edge a sheaf of
twelve huge swords or prongs for tearing an
enemy at the water-line, while above are two
iron spear-headed rams to be run out violently
by a concealed crew, and shaped either to
smash in bulwarks, or to hook on to or cut
the enemy's rigging. From the platform above
archers could discharge their arrows, or repel
boarders.
Other war-galleys were provided with cata-
pults, from which great masses of stone or
marble shot were hurled upon the enemy's ship
or amid his rowers. Some of the larger ships
carried great cranes, which, being lowered to
an opposing ship, lifted with great grappling-

irons her bow or stem high enough in air to
render her helpless for attack or defense. These
machines, called corvi," were invented by the
famous engineer Archimedes, and were used by
him with terrible effect at the siege of Syracuse,
where the attacking galleys, according to Plu-
tarch, advancing too close to the walls, were
speared or grappled with great iron prongs, and
after being lifted from the water by the ends
were swayed to and fro, whirled in mid-air, and
dashed to fragments against the rocks.
Though we may doubt the saying that "there
is nothing new under the sun," we certainly
find naval architecture repeating itself, for our
modem men-of-war are abandoning the open
fighting-tops at their mastheads, and using the
round basket-shaped fighting-towers which ap-
pear so often in old designs of Roman ships,
especially of the time of Julius Cesar-in which
we also discover a prow, ram, or beak so closely
resembling those of the "Chicago," "Atlanta,"
and "Maine," that we might accuse the later
designers of plagiarism. One has a bow the
exact counterpart of the British ironclads "Lord
Warden and "Royal Oak," now in the Royal
Navy.
What a grand sight it must have been when
two great fleets of old war-ships bore down
upon each other for battle their bulging
sails dyed in blue, red, or purple, or embroi-
dered in gold and silver stripes and emblems;
some divided in squares of colors like a checker-
board, or strewn with stars, suns, or gigantic
figures of gods or beasts or eagles. How the
thousands of oars, painted in all colors of the
rainbow, must have dazzled the eye as they
flashed in the sunlight!
As the lines of battle draw together, and
the lighter galleys, acting as skirmishers, come
within striking distance of the wings, they dash
forward at racing stroke, and after discharging
flights of arrows, which fly across the heavens
like streams of locusts, retreat again. The
larger ones now come on, and, as the hail of
arrows increases, the creak and groan of the
great catapults are heard as they are wound
up and drawn back to fire; and above the jar
of their discharge is now and then heard the
rush and the crash of the rocks and stone shot

* Taken from a print engraved during the existence of the vessel.

BATTLE-SHIPS AND SEA-FIGHTS OF THE ANCIENTS.

they let drive. Some are throwing masses of red-
hot iron, which burst through opposing decks and
set them on fire. Huge hulks now single out
and grapple with one another, and lie side by
side for the boarders to work. Cranes swing
over the enemy's decks, and great caldrons
suspended at their ends are upset, and pour
cascades of living fire upon the decks and amid
the frantic oarsmen.* What a picture! And
as the smoke lowers over the scene, the smaller
galleys take advantage of its obscurity, and dash
against their larger opponents, sweeping off
whole rows of oars,
biting and rending

with their grappling-
hooks, tearing down
whole sections of bul-
warks, and cutting
away supporting rig-
ging until the sway-
ing masts come hurt-
ling down with their
yards, sails, and burn-
ing caldrons in a cas-
cade of ruin and fire.
A ship thus partly dis-
abled is ready for
boarding, and the sec-
ond stage of the battle
is begun. Platforms
are lowered to her
decks, and the soldiers
cross in a charge, while
large baskets filled with
armed sailors are run

to the ends of the cranes
in place of the caldrons and lowered ,swiftly to
assist the charging soldiers. It rains men in
place of fire, and surrender or ruin ensues.
And now the unconquered ships, like great
wounded centipeds, with countless oars waving
and straining, slowly back from out the press
to refit or retreat, while packs of smaller ones
follow, like bandogs after a wounded bull, to
worry and annoy.
The smoke slowly drifts away, disclosing a
scene of ruin and triumph. The defeated ones
are fleeing in all directions. Trumpets blare
forth the news of victory, and triumphant shouts

arise. The least-injured and swiftest skirmishers
dash off in pursuit of the flying, while others
gather beside some foundering vessel mortally
rammed in the fight. In the distance one of
the largest galleys is a roaring mass of flames,
her oar-ports spouting hundreds of jets of flame,
her black smoke a bending column against the
setting of the sun.
As night falls over the scene, and the stars
come out, the victors draw together and sail for
home, where their captives, if rich, are ran-
somed, if poor, are sold as slaves or chained as

HAMILCAR'S "STAIRWAY OF THE GALLEYS."

rowers to their galley-benches, and the cap-
tured craft, if too damaged for use, are deprived
of their bows to grace a triumphal march, or
to adorn some temple of war or public build-
ing, as we may see in the Stairway of the Gal-
leys which was constructed before Hamilcar's
palace at Carthage.
The naval battles of those days were battles
of Titans afloat. The struggles were of neces-
sity hand to hand, in comparison with which
modern naval engagements, where a few shots
from long-range guns decide the issue in as
many minutes, sink into insignificance.

* A large proportion of the rowers were slaves chained to the seats,

X893-1

FORTUNE'S SMILE.

'''I 'fly,-,

NOW THAT I 'VE SPENT A GOOD DEAL OF MONEY IN PUTTING UP MY ESTABLISHMENT, I WILL WAIT
WITH THE HOPE THAT FORTUNE WILL SMILE UPON ME."

CHAPTER IV.
A FIGHT IN THE FOREST.
THE sharp, quick bark of an excited dog was
followed by the loud neigh of a horse, the
sonorous brays of mules, and then by the clear,
musical baying of hounds.
"They 've started something, sir," said Bob.
"I hope we may get it. Hear 'em, Sir Frederick!"
"I 'd like some fresh meat," remarked the
baronet, as he wheeled his horse in the direc-
tion of the baying.
He looked well on horseback, for he was a
large, muscular man, and a good horseman.
His broad, resolute face was cleanly shaven,
his light hair was short, he wore a palm-leaf
hat; and he had an air of being carefully well-
dressed in spite of circumstances.
As for Bob, he was a horseman of another

kind. He was short, and thin, and bow-legged,
and he seemed to be made of old saddle-leather.
He wore leather gaiters up to his knees, one
leather belt around his waist, and another over
his shoulder. He wore a leather cap on his
head, and he carried an all-leather whip in his
hand.
The cries of the hounds ceased, just as Sir
Frederick caught a glimpse of a wagon-tilt, and
of the long ears of the mules.
"Marsh," he shouted, "what are the dogs
after? "
"Dunno, sir," came dejectedly from the lips
of a long, lank man, who rode at the side of
the six-mule team. "I think likely it 's an-
other sell, sir."
"I 'm afraid it is," replied Sir Frederick. "I
never saw such a country. No game, no any-
thing! I '11 try for some fish."
I 'm glad there 's water, sir," groaned

THE WHITE CAVE.

Marsh. Not a drop since yesterday for the
mules and horses, sir. The young gentlemen
too, sir. It 's awful, sir! "
"They '11 be found," replied Sir Frederick.
"We are going into camp over yonder. Bob
will show you."
"See the dogs, sir! There they come," said
Marsh, as mournfully as ever. "But it 's only
another sell, sir."
Two more mounted men came cantering
toward them, preceded by a tall, shaggy,
woolly, lean dog, that barked at every third or
fourth jump, and followed by a brace of fine
deer-hounds that were now silent.
"Brand! Keets shouted Sir Frederick.
"What was it?"
Brand, he says it was a monkey, sir. Keets
thought it was a bear, sir-"
Nothing in the worruld but a sloth," sighed
Marsh.
Oh," said Sir Frederick, "the dogs have
opened after a koala and he has got away!
We can't chase game of that sort to-day. We '11
catch some fish."
"There 's water, then ? exclaimed Brand.
"Water ? echoed Keets. "Hurrah! "
Sir Frederick rode away toward the spot
selected for the camp, directing Brand to bring
him his fishing-tackle at once.
It 's all the same, anyhow," said Marsh, as
Brand returned from groping in the back part
of the wagon. "Some folk calls 'em mon-
keys, and some calls 'em bears, or sloths, or
koalas, and they is n't much of anything. I 'm
afraidd the young gentlemen 's hungry enough,
though, by this time, to eat possums and rats."
"The blackfellows eat them," said Keets.
I do hope Sir Frederick will get some fish,"
Marsh went on. Leddy Parry and Miss Helen
is tired of bacon. They '11 come up, right
soon -"
Another bray of the mules interrupted him,
and nobody seemed to notice that the dogs
were still uneasy, especially the long-legged,
woolly barker they spoke to as "Yip."
At that very moment, nevertheless, some-
thing not altogether unlike a monkey, but not
at all like a bear, was returning toward them
along the trail the dogs had abandoned. That
trail had run out, or they might not so quickly
VOL. XX.-15.

have left it. At least, it had appeared to run
against the roots of a tree, and had suddenly
disappeared. It had really gone up the tree,
and deer-hounds never climb. Neither could
any ordinary white man or boy have made his
way up the rugged side of that huge, gnarled
trunk. Perhaps.even the supposed monkey, or
bear, or sloth, or koala could hardly have
done so, but for the aid of a stick that he car-
ried. It was about a foot and a half in length,
fire-hardened and sharp at one end, and it
helped him wonderfully in taking advantage
of projections and of dents in the bark of the
tree. He began to climb as soon as he heard
the dogs, and in half a minute he was away
up among the branches. Then, altogether like
a monkey, or a bear, or a very active sloth, he
clambered swiftly along one of the branches that
overlapped a bough of another tree, and so he
passed on into a new hiding-place. He was in
his fifth tree when the hounds had reached the
end of their trail, at his first tree, and he was in
a hollow that hid him entirely. He was of
about the size of a boy of fourteen, very black,
woolly-headed, not so very bad-looking in the
face, and he seemed to enjoy the fun of peering
down upon the baffled dogs and hunters. He
evidently regarded them all as his enemies; and
so, perhaps, they were, for they were all foreign-
ers, and he was a native -a pure-blooded young
Australian, among his own forests, and now
hiding in a fork of one of his own blue-gum
trees.
The black boy in the tree hollow had with
him four sticks. One was the sharp stick he
had climbed with. Another was a club-stick or
small-sized waddy." Besides these he had a
short, thin-stemmed spear, and a queer, notched
bit of wood which belonged to the spear, for it
was a "throw-stick with which to sling the
spear, instead of casting it with the hand.
There he sat, quite patiently, until Keets
and Brand rode away, followed by the dogs.
He knew, now, part of the meaning of the coo-
ee-e-ing he had heard, but he did not know it
all, and he at once came down to the ground
and began a search after more knowledge. It
led him stealthily from cover to cover, until he
caught a glimpse of the tilted wagon and the
mules. Then his curiosity took hold of him

225

THE WHITE CAVE.

with double strength. It drew him along the
ground, under the protection of the grass and
bushes and undergrowth, to the edge of the
stream. He had reached a place some distance
below the spot where Bob McCracken had
already kindled a rousing fire, and near to
which the now unhampered mules had hauled
the wagon. He did not dare to get any nearer,
but his black eyes gleamed and sparkled, and
he moved his feet and hands as if he felt like
dancing upon all of them.
His eyes and not his lips asked questions,
but he seemed almost ready to yell with won-
der at the appearance of Lady Maude Parry
and her niece. They were such wonderful spe-
cimens of the great white race, and they were
so wonderfully dressed. If, however, he were
considering whether or not a black boy could
get near enough to that camp to pick up any-
thing good and carry it away, that question was
answered for him by the dogs. Every man in
the camp had said in some form:
"Yip, what is the matter with you ? Do you
smell game again?"
Sir Frederick still stood upon the rock, and
he was fishing successfully, but his face was
clouded.
Where can those boys be?" he said to him-
self. I 'm glad there are no blackfellows left
in these parts. Ned and Hugh are in no danger
of being speared."
Just then a sorrowful voice behind him ex-
claimed :
Oh, Fred! Why did we ever come out into
this wilderness ? "
My dear," replied Sir Frederick, as he
landed a fish, "it was as much your idea as
it was mine. We are not lost at all. Hugh will
turn up-and Ned. Why, Helen! have you
been crying?"
Yes, she has," said her aunt. "I wanted
to cry, myself, when I heard them all coo-ee-e
so without any answer."
"I wish the boys were here."
"It seems to me as if they could not be far
away," remarked Lady Parry, thoughtfully, and
she was right.
Only a few miles from the spot where they
were standing, Hugh was at that very moment
saying to Ned:

"We must leave those blackfellows as far
behind us as we can. We 've got to make a
chance to cook some of our kangaroo-meat."
I wish the blackfellows were about starved,"
said Ned, "so they'd have to stop and do
some cooking for themselves. They 're tre-
mendous eaters."
"We '11 push right along," said Hugh; but
if he could have looked through the trees and
have seen the five other savages, who arose
from the grass, join their scout, he would have
tried to push on faster.
Each of them carried, in addition to his col-
lection of ordinary spears and sticks, one stick
more, to show that he was not out upon a
peaceful errand. It was a carved and orna-
mented piece of wood, about six inches wide in
the middle, tapering to the ends, and about two
and a half feet long. It was a club, but it had
a handle in the middle, for it was also used as
a war-shield.
Their antics and their fierce exclamations
over the scout's discoveries plainly expressed
their unbounded surprise as well as the rage
that seized them at the presence of white men.
Only a minute or so went by before the tall,
muscular, big-headed savage who had thrown
the first boomerang at the kangaroos, pointed
at the spot on the prairie where his game still
lay, and uttered some harsh, ragged-sounding
words of command, for he was the chief of that
party. Then he pointed to the ground under
his feet, and at the trail left by the horses. The
other blacks went for the game, and he himself
set out at once to follow' the trail. At the mo-
ment, therefore, when Ned and Hugh were dis-
cussing that matter, the danger they dreaded
was coming after them, as fast, or even faster,
than their tired and thirsty horses were taking
them away from it. They were making further
remarks about the cruelty, treachery, stupidity,
and other evil qualities of Australian black-men,
and were picking their way among some thick,
high bushes, when they heard a strange, vibrat-
ing cry at some distance behind them. It
seemed as if it brought their hearts into their
mouths, it was so fierce and threatening.
"Hold on!" exclaimed Ned. "Let 's dis-
mount. We can hide right here. Something's
coming. Get ready!"

THE WHITE CAVE.

"I 'm ready," said Hugh, as they both sprang
to the ground, "I don't mean to let any man
spear me for nothing."
They were hidden by pretty good cover, for
the rank bush-growth rose higher than their
horses' heads.
Again the cry sounded; and now, as they
peered eagerly back, along their own trail, they
caught a glimpse of a tall savage gliding for-
ward among the trees, and seeming to bristle
with spears and sticks and war-shield.
He 's after us!" whispered Hugh.
"Of course he is," replied Ned; "but what
on earth is he stopping for ?"
"He 's listening," said Hugh.
"Hear him!" exclaimed Ned. "That yell
of his sounded like a crow's caw."
"There!" responded Hugh. "See that!
He dodged it! See him parry those spears!
Where do they come from?"
"There are more blackfellows! They are
his enemies, and they are attacking him," re-
plied Ned. "See!"
"Ka-kak-kia!" yelled the tall warrior, as he
skilfully struck aside the missiles which came
whizzing at him. "Ka-kak-kia!"
The whoop with which he accompanied his
defiant utterance was terrific. He had shouted
his own warrior name, with evidently no small
degree of pride, precisely as if, instead of an
Australian, he had been an American savage,
an Apache or a Sioux.
The skill and quickness he exhibited were
wonderful, for not a spear nor a stick hit him,
and he was all the while retreating swiftly from
tree to tree. He was followed in a similar
manner by about a dozen black-men, very
much like himself, whose discordant shouts
rang through the forest.
Ka-kak-kia was compelled to keep his face
all the while toward his noisy enemies, and he
was continually threatening them with his long,
slender spear, but he did not throw it. As he
shook it at them, it trembled and vibrated, and
so did the spears of the warriors opposed to him.
"Why don't they surround him ? said Hugh.
"They don't know how many other fellows
of his tribe they might find in their way, if they
should try," suggested Ned. "He does n't
know just where we are, and I guess they don't

know anything about us, or some of them
would be coming this way."
"Then," said Hugh, "we might as well lie
low, and let him draw them off."
There was very good sense in that; and so
it happened that the two lost boys, in their
perilous ambush, were watching a complex con-
flict in native Australian warfare.

CHAPTER V.
A CAVE IN A TREE-TOP.
THERE were already
many anxious fore-
bodings among the
members of Sir Fred-
erick Parry's picnic
party in their river-
side camp, and they
were destined to fur-
ther anxiety.
"Yip! Yip! Yip! suddenly rang out again.
The racket now made by the long-legged,
woolly dog sounded very much as if he were
calling his own name, while he dashed in and
out among the bushes.
"What can be the matter with him? ex-
claimed Lady Parry, as she paused in pouring
out a cup of coffee. He is surely hunting for
something. He may have found a trace of
Hugh or Ned!"
A chorus of louder exclamations from the
men responded to her, but none of them were
on account of Hugh or Ned. At that very
moment the black boy in the bushes was sud-
denly impelled to dart for the nearest tree and
climb it, leaving all his sticks at the foot of it,
for Yip had discovered him and, indeed, had
barely missed preventing his climb.
In an instant more, the whole camp rang
with shouts of men, cries of hounds, the braying
of mules, and there was a frantic "Yip! Yip!
Yip! all around the roots of the short, stunted
sapling, in the fork of which the young savage
had perched.
Blackfellows !" was the first, half breath-
less remark of Sir Frederick. "Who 'd have
dreamed of it! Now, indeed, we may say we
are in trouble!"
Hugh! Hugh! Hugh!" exclaimed Lady

THE WHITE CAVE.

Parry. My boy! Lost in the woods, among
the cannibals! "
"Oh, Aunt Maude! Poor Hugh!" mourned
Helen Gordon. "And poor Ned Wentworth!"
It 's bad luck," said Bob McCracken.
"But we '11 get that one."
The black boy did not wish to be caught,
but he had been imprudent. He had stared
too long at that wonderful camp, and at that
mysterious, brilliant dinner-table.
There was no such possibility left him as
climbing into another tree from the one he was
in, and there were the dogs; and then came the
white men, shouting to him to come down. He
could understand their motions, if not their
words, and down he came, but that was all the
good it did them. Not one word of English
could they get out of him, not even after they
had fed him with broiled fish and fried bacon.
His big black eyes continued to dance from
one to another of them, and at the dogs and
the weapons, and other matters. He did speak,
more than once, but what he said was all in his
own strange, monotonous tongue.
"It 's all gibberish," remarked Bob Mc-
Cracken; "but where there 's one of those fel-
lows, you may be sure there are more of 'em
not far away. We '11 all be speared, if we don't
luk out, and then we '11 all be ate up. It 's
the hard death to die, is that."
Sir Frederick himself was as keenly alarmed
concerning savages as was any member of his
party, but he said nothing. He hardly an-
swered his wife, at first, when she spoke about
Hugh and his peril. He was so silent, after he
gave up questioning the black boy, that she
almost lost patience with him.
"Frederick!" she exclaimed. "Why don't
you say something. What shall we do ?"
"Do?" he responded. "What are we to
do ? That is precisely what puzzles me! "
He meant that what they needed most was
information; for the small captive savage was a
very plain and direct suggestion of the nearness
of parties of grown-up savages, just such as
those which Hugh and Ned were at that hour
trying to evade. Both parties of blacks were

about six miles distant from the camp, although
as yet they did not seem to know it.

As for Ned and Hugh, they were about as far
away, and they were going farther at every step;
but they had succeeded in putting only a mile
and a half or so between them and the cabbage-
palm prairie, where the kangaroos had fallen
under the boomerangs of Ka-kak-kia and the
other skilful thrower.
The boys felt very sure that they had es-
caped being actually seen by the chief, or by
any of his party, or by the enemies who were
now pitching spears at him with their throw-
sticks.
"Hugh," whispered Ned, as he cowered in
the bushes, "oh but can't he dodge ? "
The tall black man was indeed dodging
and parrying wonderfully well. His eyes were
quick, his nerves were steady, his courage was
dauntless; but then his foes were increasing in
number. Fully a dozen ferocious figures were
now darting hither and thither among the trees,
throwing, or threatening to throw, their long
javelins. They were all yelling almost inces-
santly, but one of them changed suddenly into
a shrill whoop that sounded like a warning to
the rest. Then he dropped to the ground. A
spear hurled by an unseen hand had gone
through his left shoulder;
A sudden cry of triumph burst from the
lips of Ka-kak-kia. He felt as if he were
rescued, for that spear told him he had drawn
his enemies along until his friends had heard
the noise and had come to help him.
The fight had really only just begun, to be
sure, but now the first onset had for the mo-
ment ended.
It was the cleverest thing I ever saw!"
exclaimed Hugh, as he crouched watchfully
under his bush.
"I 'd heard how they did it," said Ned;
"but you or I 'd have been stuck full of spears
in no time. That 's just what '11 happen to us
yet, if they find out we 're here."
Let 's push along," said Hugh. I did n't
dare to move hand or foot till now."

(To be continued.)

Lquiuij":

i- m

L- D 4, o '

WHEN WE GET ROUND THE FIRE AT NIGHT.

BY VIRGINIA WOODWARD CLOUD.

WHEN we get round the fire at night,
We three, while Grandma knits and knits,
The big wood-fire 's our only light,-
The corner's dark where Grandma sits.
But then her needles gleam and click,
And then we hear the great clock tick
Louder than when the sun shines bright.

And my! but Grandma tells us tales,
You ought to hear her!-about a boat
That came one night-it had no sails,
Nor anything-right in our bay!
And there 's another 'bout the day
Gran'father lost his wedding coat!

And Joey, when he keeps awake,
Is always asking her to tell
About the wolves that tried to break
Into the old school-house one time,
And then the Dominie had to climb
'Way up outside and ring the bell!

But when the other tales are done,
Then it is Cicely's great delight
To hear about the little son
Who went to sea.-We always say
It 's better 'n any time o' day,
When we get round the fire at night!

'Ni

4.vr

,~ ay'~

THE COLUMBIAN NAVAL PARADE, AT NEW YORK, OCTOBER 11, 1892.

'Z

THE COLUMBIAN NAVAL PARADE.

By DANIEL JUDSON.

ROBABLY few of those who
-c witnessed the great naval
Parade given by the State of
New York in honor of Colum-
bus will ever forget that bril-
liant marine pageant.
The gathering of the ships
was not by the order of the
Government; in fact, the war-ships did not
receive permission to take part until a day
or two before. There was little preparation.
There was simply an idea among those who live
upon the water, that since the school-children,
and college students, and soldiers were to pa-
rade on land, the ships also should do some-
thing in honor of the event.
How they all gathered together at such short
notice, fell into line, and moved promptly in one
grand column, was a marvel; but there they were
in perfect order, a great fleet covering the bay,
expressing their joy, in ship-fashion, with fly-
ing flags, shrieking whistles, and booming guns.
At nine o'clock in the morning, the war-ships
could be seen lifting anchors, and quietly drop-
ping down the harbor to Gravesend Bay. At
eleven, they had all assembled there. The
French frigate, "Arethuse"; the .Spanish ship,
"Infanta Isabella"; the Italian, "Giovanni
Bausan"; our vessels, the "Dolphin," the Mian-
tonomoh," and the "Philadelphia"; the torpedo-
boat Cushing," the air-gun boat "Vesuvius,"
the revenue cutter "Grant," the Blake," and
scores of pleasure boats were in readiness.
At a signal the war-ships formed in column,
with the Naval Reserve fleet of tugboats in
advance, and all moved toward the Narrows.
Then upon the right came a flash and a heavy
boom, succeeded by a cloud of smoke from a
monster gun at Fort Hamilton. Then followed
another, and another, until the entire shore was
draped in a fleecy mantle of smoke. It was
the opening salute. Across the bay, Fort Rich-
mond joined in, and between the two walls of

smoke thus formed, the fleet entered and passed
for a while out of sight, just as in a battle.
Opposite the Statue of Liberty a great num-
ber of tugs, river-steamers, and yachts fell in
behind the leaders, while whistles blew, guns
roared, and Battery William sent forth a wel-
come from its big old-fashioned cannon. Thus
the procession moved on, and from out the
bank of smoke the Statue of Liberty appeared
once more upon her lofty pedestal, calmly gaz-
ing out to sea.
The house-tops, wharves, and Battery Park
now came into view, completely packed with
multitudes of people, whose cheers came to the
ear like the buzzing of many hives of bees.
And here a mighty shout went up, as the fire-
boat New Yorker set its pumps in motion,
and threw aloft a gigantic column of water.
Up, up it mounted, higher and higher, until its
plume was four hundred feet in air; then, bend-
ing, it made a graceful curve, and was carried
away in a shower of spray by the western wind.
Soon the other fire-boats joined in the exhibi-
tion with their water-jets, and other boats took
up the sport, until a dozen streams were com-
mingled in a great watery bouquet, glinting and
glistening in the afternoon sun, displaying beau-
tiful rainbow tints and fantastic shadows.
The Hudson was crowded from bank to
bank with steam and sailing craft, all heading
for General Grant's tomb at Riverside Park. A
heavy mist hung over the waters from the
smoke, through which the onrushing ships
looked gray and ghostly. The crowded thou-
sands on the shores seemed like patches of ants.
Then a signal-gun was fired from the leading
ship, which had reached her goal. A hundred
anchors plunged to the bottom, a hundred guns
broke forth in a grand salute, thousands of gay
flags mounted to their mastheads, as many
whistles united in an ear-splitting shriek which
lasted for ten minutes, and the great naval
parade was over.

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.

JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT.

A HAPPY NEW YEAR to you one and all, my
beloved! And a good honest year, and a busy
year, for that matter-a year of good, healthy
work and play, with gratitude and kindness atop
and below. This is my greeting unto you.
Now for business. We '11 begin with
HUMPTY-DUMPTY IN THE FAR EAST.
HAMTI-DAMTI chargya chhutt!
Hamti-Damti girgya phut!
Rajah Ki-pulton Ranee Ki-ghoree
Hamti Kubbee nalim joiee!
"That's how we sing 'Humpty-Dumpty' in the
East, when we are small," writes one Rudyard
Kipling, a right warm friend of yours, in a letter
to this very pulpit. So you see there are merry
rhymes and sweet little nonsense verses all over the
world, and the far East is not so very far away, after
all. How can it be a strange country to you when
once you know that Humpty-Dumpty is cutting up
antics there, and you have every reason to believe
that cows are jumping over moons, and wondrous
wise men are disporting about bramble-bushes in
true Mother Goose fashion!
By the way, somewhere in this very month of
ST. NICHOLAS, I am told, you youngest folk are to
have, or may already have had, a rare tale told to
you, in the original Kipling, by the very friend
who sent you the Hamti-Damti. What wonder
you all look so good-natured!

A LONG FENCE.
THE wall of China is said to be over a thousand
miles long, and a good strong wall it is, for it is de-
signed to hold the country and to keep out enemies.
But have you heard of the delicate fence of close
wire netting, five hundred miles long, between the
Australia Colonies and New South Wales and

Queensland? It, too, is designed to keep out in-
truders, and very troublesome intruders they are-
these furry, innocent-looking little creatures that
frisk about Australia, take possession of the soil,
and rear their families on the best vegetation they
can find. They seem to consider the country as a
vast free hotel, opened for their especial benefit:
but they are a calamity to the landlord, and very
large rewards for their total destruction have been
offered by the Australian government.

A GYMNASTIC GOLDFISH.
DEAR JACK: I once had five little goldfish, which I
kept in a large glass globe on a velvet-covered shelf
under a mirror.
One of these, Goldy by name, was fond of music,
but he had his preferences. When we played the violin,
he would get as far away as possible and show his dis-
like very plainly. His favorite was the zither. When
it was being played, he would push himself as close to
the glass and as near to the instrument as he could get,
and there he would lie perfectly still until the music
ceased. We noticed this many times. Once I was prac-
tising, and only a minute before had been watching
Goldy's intent expression, when I heard a great splash
and the musically-inclined but too enthusiastic fish lay
flapping on the floor till rescued.
For some time he continued to thrive, but one day, I
remember, I was carrying him up-stairs, when he sud-
denly gave a great bound out of the water, struck the
banisters, and went flying downward. So I rushed after
him and with difficulty got him back to the globe; but
that was the beginning of the end. From that hour music
no more had charms for the poor little fish, the violin
failed to arouse his anger, the zither to soothe him, and,
after several days of listlessness, one morning I found
his poor little body floating on the water. I never could
have such another, so the globe was laid in a dusty corner
and I have now only my dear old zither to remind me of
music-loving Goldy.
A. L. E.
THE HIGH-MINDED, HARE.
WHEN the picture your Jack'shows you to-day
came to this pulpit, I said to myself, "Ah, at last
the young folk have a picture that tells its own
story. It 's as plain as day. A hare and the tor-
toise are to run a race. The other hare is to be
umpire, because, as there 's no ring, the umpire
must be able to keep up with the race. The first
hare being a high-minded little fellow, familiar
with all the hare-and-tortoise fables, pro and con,
has said to the tortoise, "Here, my lumbering
friend, I 'm sure to beat you if I run; and I 'm
not one to play on the wayside or take a doze and
let you win by accident. This is how we will
manage it. I '11 go on your back, and when we
near the goal, I '11 haunch myself as far back
on your dainty shell as I can. Then it 's nip and
tuck whose nose touches the stake first. When we
come within four feet of it, you hustle and I '11
jump."
So far the picture was plain enough, but just
then it occurred to the dear Little Schoolma'am
that she might as well read me Mr. Beard's letter
and learn how he ended the fable. Imagine my
surprise. There was no fable at all,--only solid
facts, and those the very best of their kind. You
shall have it now, my beloved, word for word:

JACK-IN-TH

THE GALAPAGOS TORTOISES.
DEAR JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT: At Central Park in
New York city may be seen a happy family, the like of
which, possibly, cannot be met anywhere else in the
world. It consists of a number of frisky young hares and
the slowest and most ancient-looking of tortoises. The
tortoises, however, are not as old as they appear; when
grown to their full size they will weigh hundreds of
pounds apiece, and be quite able to carry men upon their
backs. The tortoises are part of a number brought from
the Galapagos Islands, several years ago, to the Natural
History Museum at Washington. These islands, form-
ing a small archipelago in the Pacific Ocean, are very
remarkable in many respects, but in none more so, per-
haps, than in having been the home of races of giant
tortoises of which the specimens at Central Park are a
remnant. Commodore Porter, who visited the Galapa-
gos Islands about eighty years ago, saw such droves of
these tortoises that he says a man might have walked a
considerable distance on their backs without descending
to the ground. He saw specimens five feet long, four
and a half feet wide, and measuring three feet thick
through the body. He was impressed not only with
their size, but with their strange shape. They had
long necks and flat, serpent-like heads, and long legs
(for turtles) upon which they stood with the body a
full foot from the ground. Though keen of sight, these
tortoises are quite deaf, the loudest noise failing to startle
them; but in their wild state they are so timid that
the sight of a man makes them scuttle off in ponderous
haste. Sometimes, however, as Mr. Darwin says, the
instant they perceive any one, they draw in their legs

893.]1

IE-PULPIT. 233

and head, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground
with a heavy thud, as if struck dead. I frequently," he
says, "got upon their backs, and upon giving a few raps
upon the hinder part of the shell, they would rise up and
walk away; but I found it very difficult to keep my bal-
ance." The Galapagos tortoise is a thirsty creature: the
one object of its life seems to be to get enough to drink.
In the smaller islands, where there are no springs, the
tortoises are obliged to content themselves with the suc-
culent Peruvian cactus and other juicy plants; but in the
larger ones they travel long distances to the springs
which occur in the more elevated central parts. From
every part of the sea-coast broad, well-beaten paths,
originally made by tortoises, converge to the interior
and lead to the watering-places. Travelers who vis-
ited the islands when these paths were used by the tor-
toises tell us how curious it was to see the huge
creatures, one set eagerly traveling toward the springs
with outstretched necks, and another set returning,
having "drunk their fill." When a tortoise arrived at
a spring, quite regardless of the spectator, it buried its
head in water above the eyes and greedily swallowed
great mouthfuls at the rate of about ten a minute.
Although rather clumsy pets, the creatures are entirely
harmless. The little saucy hares that share quarters
with them at Central Park play around, about, and all
over them, as if they were so many great boulders, which
indeed they somewhat resemble.
Unfortunately for these Galapagos tortoises, the deli-
cious flavor of their meat has long been known; and so
it happens that through the greed and carelessness of
mankind they are rapidly disappearing from the face of
the earth. Yours truly,
J. CARTER BEARD.

9 "

JoQr2sor .

S" HE twelve merry Months once decided to make,
For the New Year approaching, a wonderful cake,-
Contributing freely each one, more or less,
And sharing the pride of the final success.
September, who through her acquaintance with schools
SWas up in the latest grammatical rules,
Wrote out, in a lovely Spencerian hand,
A recipe any one might understand.
November,-as usual, busy and hurried,
And with her Election-cake specially worried,
For fear it would burn while her mind was so flurried,-
From what she had left on her generous hands
'When her Thanksgiving cooking, with all its demands,
SWas finished, the milk and the spices supplied;
r While April the eggs was o'erjoyed to provide,
All colored, of course, with indelible dyes-
My choicest!" said April, with tears in her eyes.
March furnished the sugar, and though I admit
'T was maple, still that did n't matter a bit.
He mixed the cake, too, being sturdy and stout,
And accustomed to stirring things briskly about.
JUNE." The flour was from May,-her particular brand
(You 've heard of the "mayflower"?), and white as her hand.
Dear June sent the flavoring,-extract of rose,
The sweetest and purest, as every one knows;
And August the butter, in cups of bright gold,
Which seemed all the sunshine of summer to hold.
February gave cherries, quite dried up and brown,
234

A NEW YEARS CAKE.

From the tree that George Washington said he cut down;
And October declared, with a laugh and a frown
(Understand, this is slang which I do not commend!),
That to vie with his gift she could never pretend,
Though she, too, had nothing but chestnuts to send!
July did the baking, and skilfully, too.
'T was done top and bottom, and all the way through.
Her oven was steady and right to a T.
January's crisp icing was lovely to see.
December, quite ready to part with her best,
Declared, what with stockings and trees and the rest,
Every thing that she owned she had given away,
Save a bonbon or two and a bright holly spray.
So these, for adornment, arranged with much taste,
On the top of the beautiful structure were placed.
"Feb" dashed off a rhyme,-he was quick with his pen
From writing of valentines now and again.
And, boxed up with care, and addressed in red ink,
By the Lightning Express, which is quick as a wink
(Engaged by July), this delectable cake,
Whose like I defy any baker to bake,
Was sent New Year's morning, in triumph and glee,
From the twelve merry Months to their dear Ninety-three.

THE LITTLE VERSE THAT FILLS UP THE PAGE.

By EDITH M. THOMAS.

I 'M the toddling child at the foot of the page,
But I sing like a wren or a linnet!
All smile when they see me come on the stage;
I sing,--and am gone in a minute.

235

INANIMATE THINGS ANIMATED.

BY P. NEWELL.

7;

I7;

EVEN IF THE SUGAR-TONGS WERE COMICAL, THE CHINA MUG
SHOULD NOT HAVE LAUGHED WHEN ITS FACE WAS SO BRITTLE.

6'1

/i~i

f -/

$1-~

MR. PEAPOD SMILES.

/7 ,

1-*
v'I.,

WHENEVER THE BOXING-GLOVE WISHES TO TAKE EXERCISE
HE SWINGS THE INDIAN CLUBS.

A MODERN CHIMNEY-SWEEP.

C:

THE LETTER-BOX.

HERE are three odd bits of verse sent to the Letter-
Box by Mr. Frank Valentine. They are called Rever-
sible Jingles."
I. LOBELIA.

HER name it was Lobelia,
A winsome flower was she
Decidedly (in some respects)
A credit to her age and sex.
But, oh, her vanity!

Her mother, she was soft and mild,
Well-meaning, as folks tell,
For intellect not eminent;
But though she very little meant,
She always meant it well.

And so in languid tones and low
Her gentle accents came,
Lobelia, be lowlier,
Be lowlier, Lobelia!
You really are to blame."

QUOTH he, "I must some letters write,
A hundred more or less, sir.
I want to have them fastened right--
They shall be sealed up, yes, sir!
No trifling gum I '11 use, I vum."
He went-but soon with joy
Came wheeling sacks of sealing-wax,
And cried, "See here, my boy! "

III. HIS LETTER-BOX.

SAID poor Mr. Reece
To the Chief of Police:
Sir, they 've rifled my box of its letters.
When I left it last night
It was locked up all right-
Oh, catch them and put them in fetters."

Said the Chief of Police
To poor Mr. Reece:
To catch them we 're not at all sure, sir.
You should get better locks
For your old letter-box;
For prevention is better than cure, sir."

FORT SAM HOUSTON,
SAN ANTONIO, TEX.
DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: Our fathers are captains in the
Twenty-third Infantry, and we live next door to each
other. Each of us has a pet pony and pet cows.
In reading the interesting stories of your magazine, we
like the "Rangoon" stories best, and wish you would
notify Mr. E. Vinton Blake to please write some more.

We also like "Tom Paulding," and many others of your
stories.
We have natatorium parties every Friday in summer.
There are two ambulances full of people, and the drivers
generally go different roads and run races to see which
can get there first.
There are seven companies of infantry, two troops of
cavalry, and one battery of light artillery in this post.
All boys and girls who have not already visited an
army post, ought to do so. It would give any one a
lesson in neatness. The floors of the barracks, espe-
cially in the mess-room, are so clean that you could eat
from them, and the benches and tables are as white as
snow. We remain your devoted readers,
MARY P. E-
WINNIE M. P--.

SAN FRANCISCO, CAL.
MY DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I have been taking you
now for three years. You were given to me as a Christ-
mas present by my aunt. I am a girl of fourteen years,
and I must say that I enjoy Tom Paulding" very much.
I live in the West, at San Francisco, California, and I
have no brothers or sisters, but I find great consolation
in reading, especially in the pages of your delightful
magazine.
The Golden Gate Park of this city is a beautiful sight
to behold. It possesses a fine conservatory, an observa-
tory, and many interesting points. The park extends to
the Pacific Ocean, and we are soon to have a grand boule-
vard on the beach. There is a fine drive and walk through
this park to the beach, and my mother and I once walked
through it. It is a long but pleasant walk. Good-by.
From your ever faithful reader,
"THE CALIFORNIA GIRL."

REDWOOD, DEEP RIVER, CONN.
DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: You have been coming to our
house fourteen years since my brother was a baby. I
am eight, and I am beginning to read you myself, but
mama reads the letters to me.
I want to write and tell you about some pets I brought
from the South-the Gulf of Mexico: three little chame-
leons and two lizards, rusty ginnies," and two little
"'gators." The chameleons are sometimes brown and
sometimes a very bright green. They eat live flies and
drink water, lapping it up with their little pink tongues,
like kittens. They like music, too, and when my brother
plays on his violin they turn their heads and listen in
such a cunning way. Sometimes I think they are home-
sick, and I am sorry I brought them away. The baby
chameleon is "Spooks," the other two are "Dr. Jekyll"
and" Mr. Hyde." Mr. Hyde's tail was cut offby the win-
dow, and it is growing out again. One lizard's tail was
broken and we mended it with court-plaster. Mr. Hyde
runs away for days, and then comes back so hungry, and
eats all the flies we will give him. I don't like the rusty
ginnies as well. Mama says they are too spidery, and
we don't like to have them crawl about on our hands and
arms as the others do. I forgot to tell about my alligators,
"Tom" and "Jerry." They were very homesick after
we left St. Andrews. Coming through the Dead Lakes
and up the Appalachicola and Chattahoochee rivers, they
would not eat, and when we reached Atlanta they had
37

THE LETTER-BOX.

forgotten how to bite. So mama thought they were
going to die; but every day she would hold their mouths
open and put a few drops of medicine down their throats.
Did you ever look into a 'gator's mouth? The throat
seems closed up. Afterward she gave them beef-tea, and
on cold nights wrapped them in warm blankets and put
them before the grate, and we finally got them here alive.
Now Jerry is getting foo cross; he bites, and he ate a
pollywog the other day. I like the chameleons best.
GEORGE SHELDON S-.

DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: Two years ago my brother
Percy and I came to Londonderry to attend school.
Our home is in New York. We have the ST. NICHOLAS
every month, and are always glad to see it. Last sum-
mer we were at a beautiful sea-coast town spending ourva-
cation with mama, who came from America to surprise us.
There the Mourne Mountains run right down to the sea,
and there is only one street of houses. Many trout-
streams dash through the place, and we had fun fishing.
Mama gave, us each a little yacht with a cabin in it,
and they flew over the water very fast. We had grand
frolics in the surf, which was very fine. The coast-guard
had a station with a life-boat. There is a framed list
with the names of all the ships they have rescued: the

last one was the "Flying Foam," with eleven men on
board. Golf is the game most liked.
ERNEST H. H-

HOBART, TASMANIA.
DEAR ST. NICHOLAS: I am a little girl, eleven years
old, and live in Hobart, the capital of Tasmania. Ho-
bart is only a small town, with grand scenery on all sides.
From my window I can see the river Derwent, and the
beautiful hills and mountains as a background. Mount
Wellington is our largest, and is often covered with
snow in the winter.
I like picnicking very much; we often go to.a place
called Ferntree Bower. I have been up to the springs
only once, and there is such a beautiful view from
there. Tasmania is a favorite place for visitors in
summer.
I have been staying down at Shipwrights' Point with
mama, who has been away for her health, and I like stay-
ing there very much; we went out boating every day,
and altogether I had a delightful time.
I have taken you for three years; this is the fourth
year, and I like you very, very much. I think that
"Lady Jane," and the Fortunes of Toby Trafford," and
" Chan Ok" are my favorites; but they are all delight-
ful. With love, your devoted little reader,
IRENE B-.

DOUBLE ACROSTIC.
ALL of the words described contain the same number
of letters. When rightly guessed and placed one below
another, the initials will all be the same letter, and the
finals will spell an antagonist.
CROSS-WORDS: r. A shrewd trick. 2. Profound.
3. To discontinue. 4. An extinct bird. 5. A mall
raised platform. 6. A prefix. 7. Power. 8. A small
coin. A. C. CRETT.
WORD-BUILDING.
I. A LETTER. 2. A nickname. 3. A snug place of
retreat. 4. To sever. 5. General tendency. 6. Easily
impressed. 7. Offers. 8. Inhabitant. 9. A high exec-
utive official. VINA.
PENTAGONS.

I. I. IN microscope. 2. A large serpent. 3. Con-
tests. 4. A reckoner. 5. Dress. 6. A kind of coarse
woolen cloth. 7. A certain dance.
II. I. In microscope. 2. A pronoun. 3. A frag-
ment of an earthen vessel. 4. Fascinated. 5. A valuable
. fur-bearing animal. 6. Marks. 7. A pulpit.
When the two longest words in each of the foregoing
pentagons have been placed side by side, the fourteen
letters will spell a word meaning destroyed the effect of
a charm. "JOB PEERYBINGLE."
ZIGZAG.
ALL of the words described contain the same num-
ber of letters. When these are rightly guessed and
placed one below another, in the order here given, the

zigzag, beginning at the upper left-hand letter, will spell
a name by which Virgil is sometimes called.
CROSS-WORDS: I. A disorderly crowd. 2. A cart.
3. An inclosed place used as a receptacle for any com-
modity. 4. Consumed. 5. A lovely lady in a famous
poem by Spenser. 6. The juice of plants. 7. To in-
voke evil upon. 8. To solicit. 9. Having a pale hue.
Io. A color. ii. Frolicsome amusement. D.
SYNCOPATIONS.
THE words described are of equal length. When they
have been syncopated (that is, when they have had one
letter taken away), and the remaining letters transposed,
or rearranged, the initial letters will spell the name of a
great painter who was baptized on January I, 1618.
I. Syncopate and transpose a sure-footed animal, and
make an inlaid pattern. 2. Syncopate and transpose a
bounty, and make one who
is chosen to see that the rules
of a game are strictly observed.
3. Syncopate and transpose
faultless, and make a clergy-
man in charge of a parish. 4.
Syncopate and transpose
phraseology, and make to
I charge with a crime. 5.
0 Syncopate and transpose
graceful, and make an envoy
of the pope. 6. Syncopate
m aand transpose to sparkle, and
make one skilled in law. 7.
Syncopate and transpose en-
croachments, and make to
/ establish. DYCIE.
S CONCEALED WORDS.
SWHAT objects, common at
SChristmas-time, are concealed
in the accompanying Christ-
iI mas stocking?

240

I...... 2

5 6

3
FROM I to 2, a poem set to music; from I to 3, peev-
ish; from 2 to 3, stranded; from 4 to 5, to solicit votes;
from 4 to 6, burned to a cinder; from 5 to 6, conquered
by force of superior power. FRANK SNELLING.

I. UPPER SQUARE: I. One of the United States.
2. To languish. 3. A large artery. 4. A house for
entertaining travelers. 5. Precious stones.
II. LEFT-HAND SQUARE: I. A masculine name.
2. A body of water. 3. Springs clear of the ground.
4. A failing in duty. 5. The assault of an army.
III. RIGHT-HAND SQUARE: I. Relating to the sun.
2. A tribe of American Indians. 3. Freighted. 4. One
intrusted with the business of another. 5. Tears.
IV. LOWER SQUARE: I. Conical. 2. A cape with
a hood, formerly worn by the clergy. 3. Little balls
of medicine. 4. Striking effect. 5. Desists from labor
or exertion. "SAMUEL SYDNEY."
THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK.

THE RIDDLE-BOX.
ILLUSTRATED METAMORPHOSIS. THE problem is to change one given word to another
given word, by altering one letter at a time, each altera-
tion making a new word, the number of letters being
always the same, and the letters remaining always in
the same order. Example: Change LAMP to FIRE in
four moves. Answer: lamp, lame, fame, fare, fire.
-, In the accompanying picture, change HENS to cooP in
ten moves. Each change is shown in the illustration.
J. C. B.
HOLLOW STAR.